


More Human than Previously Thought

by Enclave



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, similar to canon but with some details changed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-04-24 20:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 95,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14363322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enclave/pseuds/Enclave
Summary: Bucky's life is inverted when Hydra sells him to SHIELD, who quickly deem him psychologically unfit to work for them doing the only thing he knows how to do: assassinating. Instead, they assign him to be a helpmeet to one of their operatives, Steve Rogers, and promise him that they'll give him a job sniping if he can make it through a year helping Steve around the house and assisting him with his duties for SHIELD.Bucky takes on his position as a helpmeet with his usual style: driven, perfectionistic, and completely emotionally detached. But soon he finds that when he's not having his memories wiped regularly, he's not quite as much of a cold, calculating machine as he thought. He starts to remember more about his work with Hydra, inconvenient emotions crop up, and his careful plans begin to fall apart...





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first novel-length fanfiction! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> This work will total about 85k words and I intend to post a chapter at least weekly until it's done. This is an AU where Steve and Bucky did not meet until after Bucky was captured by Hydra and turned into the Winter Soldier. 
> 
> A few content warnings: There will be canon-typical violence, and the usual stuff involving Bucky's background with Hydra, throughout this work. Where chapters have more specific triggers, I will try to include a mention of that trigger at the start of the chapter. The end-notes for chapters with triggers will contain a brief synopsis of the entire chapter so you can skip it if you don't want to read that content. Regarding the tags, the past sexual assault is not graphic/explicitly described. Please let me know if I miss something!
> 
> This fic was heavily influenced by a couple of other authors! The Supernatural fanfic Carry On by Tamryn Eradani, which was originally on here but was taken down by the author (you can still find PDFs if you search), was a big influence. It's a fantastic fic revolving around a live-in sex-work relationship (it's Destiel). Venus in Vibranium by Betts (on Ao3) was another big one. Both of these were more of a D/s vibe and on the more explicit side of the scale, and I wanted to do something with less of a focus on sex and power dynamics and more domesticity, so this fic goes in a pretty different direction than either of these.
> 
> Lastly, comments, kudos, and constructive criticism are all appreciated -- if you like (or don't like) something, please let me know so I can do it more (or less) in the future!

Bucky gasps sharply when his handler strikes him across the face. Luckily she doesn't hear him over the roar of the helicopter, or she would probably hit him again for reacting to the first hit. Pain sparkles across the side of his face. He shouldn't have asked where they were going. He must already have asked and heard the explanation and forgotten it.

"I told you," she yells over the roar of the chopper. "You're being transferred. You're going to have a new handler now. Hydra doesn't want you anymore. You're being decommissioned."

He nods silently, wishing he hadn't spoken. He usually doesn't speak. He's off his game today, disoriented and agitated. He keeps coming in and out of consciousness in different transports, in the company of different guards. At least he knows he's still with Hydra, his employers, their distinctive crest marked on their uniforms, trucks, and aircraft. He doesn't know where he is right now, has no specifics about his current situation. Usually the memory wiping makes him docile, calm, but right now he mostly feels fuzzy and helpless, barely able to hold a single thought in his mind.

He ducks his head down, trying to get his bearings, and sees that he's in a soft grey set of clothes, not his tactical uniform. That probably means he's not being sent on mission. It's usually a bad sign when he's taken out of cryo but he doesn't have a mission. Usually means he's going to be punished for something. A frisson of fear runs through him.

When his handler sees that he's still agitated, still not at full functionality, she starts their usual dialogue, so familiar to him that it runs through his head while he sleeps, or while he's lying in wait in one of his sniper nests. "What are you?"

"A professional."

"That's right. One of our very best professionals. And what is a professional?"

He's so out of it that it takes him a second to process her words and scrape his answer together. "One... one step away from a machine," he growls, frustrated with his slowness.

"What do you do?"

"What I am told. I complete the mission."

"And?"

"No more. Nothing else."

"And?"

"And... no memories. No emotions. Just... the task." Sometimes this whole litany comes out in one smooth stream; sometimes it's jerky, like pedaling a bike with broken gears. "That's what makes me the best. The best in the world at what I do."

"Good. Eyes on the far wall. Sit still."

He locks his body in place and stares down the far wall obediently, looking past the guards and other Hydra employees lined up on the bench across from him and his handler. The copter swings around to one side, banking into a tight turn that sends his stomach swooping. There's a flash of pain through his skull, one of the terrible headaches he gets sometimes coming on, exacerbated by the motion of the helicopter. He feels nauseated. He tries to ride out the pain, but at some point he fades out of consciousness again.

When he opens his eyes, two guards are gripping him by the biceps and the noise of the copter is replaced by the echoing quiet of many people being silent in a large room. He's in an underground corridor, lit eerie blue by sconces on the walls. The floor is simple concrete, the walls cinderblock. There are a set of uniformed soldiers in front of him in a loose formation. Not Hydra. He recognizes the emblem on their uniforms. SHIELD. He memorized the design once for a hit, a hit he no longer remembers, the uniforms the only vestige of it remaining.

There are a few soldiers in combat fatigues in the front of SHIELD's ranks, and behind them people in suits, holding paper and folders. Some of them wear small electronic earpieces. Automatically scanning the room, he spots several cameras glinting from the walls and ceiling. SHIELD has visual and audio on him and his handler. This is highly irregular. 

He's beginning to understand what is happening to him.  _ Decommissioned. Hydra doesn't want you anymore _ . Did he do something wrong? Did he make a mistake so bad his handler gave up on him? He tenses up, and the guards hold his arms tighter, hard enough to leave bruises. He stares straight ahead, dread gripping him.

In the ceiling, too, there is a flash of metal visible, not quite like the shine off the cameras. He pattern-matches it and he's pretty sure it's a sniper taking aim at him; he can barely see the shape of someone's body behind the point of light. The weapon is unusual: a crossbow. From what he knows of SHIELD, probably a cross loaded with an expandable steel broadhead, new, and aimed to kill.

He swallows convulsively. If he was given instructions on how to behave on this mission, he doesn't remember them. He wishes he did.

His headache hasn't abated at all, and as some members of his team and some members of the SHIELD team murmur at each other another wave of pain washes through him, centered just behind his left eye. He moves one of his arms, forgetting about the guards holding him in place, to try to cover his eyes from the light. His handler snaps from behind him, "Don't move." He stills himself, ashamed of his own disobedience, relieved to find that his handler is near him. At least he has her here. He won't be quite as useless if she's around to correct him. 

His head is throbbing, almost badly enough to take his mind off the crossbow bolt.

One of the SHIELD representatives, a formidable looking redhead, turns around to accept a metal suitcase from one of the suited women behind her. The suitcase is heavy; she doesn't stagger under its weight, but shifts her weight to compensate enough to tell Bucky there's something dense inside. She turns around and steps forward into the gap between the two teams, holding the suitcase and glaring at the Hydra operatives. After a moment the two guards holding Bucky take half a step forward, pulling him along.

The SHIELD representative starts to count down from five in English. Though he knows English and occasionally uses it on missions, Bucky has heard nothing but Russian for years, and it takes him a second to adjust to the foreign-sounding language. As she nears zero, another Hydra guard steps forward. When the countdown ends, the two guards holding Bucky shove him towards the SHIELD representative. He stumbles along towards her, scrambling not to lose his footing and struggling to understand what's going on.  _ You're being decommissioned. _

What is going to come after that? Will he be a sniper for SHIELD now?

The Hydra guards release their grip on him and waiting SHIELD counterparts take him by the forearms much more gently. They maneuver him around to face the Hydra team as they slap cuffs onto his wrists. The soft rubber lining the cuffs protect his skin from the metal, which surprises him; Hydra normally doesn't bother with that sort of courtesy. He watches the Hydra team as they turn and retreat with the suitcase.

His handler doesn't look back, not even once. He stares at her until she disappears around a bend in the dim corridor. Then he keeps staring. He doesn't think she's coming back. What will he do without her? He doesn't even know what's in the suitcase for which he was apparently just traded.

Without Hydra, who is he? What is he?

One of the guards adjusts the cuffs around his wrists and, absurdly, apologizes to him. "The cuffs are temporary. I know it's not very dignified. We'll have you in a nicer holding cell soon, assuming you cooperate."

He shakes his head minutely. The guard shouldn't talk out of turn. They'll be punished.

The guards guide him away down the dark hallway and he walks along complacently; the sniper with the crossbow has disappeared from the ceiling. His thoughts are sluggish, his mind fogged with fear and confusion. His handler must have told him, at some point, what he did wrong, so wrong that Hydra decided to give him away to SHIELD, their enemies. But he doesn't remember what it was. He's not sure where he is or even what country he's in, doesn't remember entering the building, doesn't know where he will be sent when he leaves, if he's ever supposed to leave. He has no past, no future; his mind is a blank. Set him down in a sniper nest in this state and he's the best assassin in the world, drifting quietly and cooperatively along the currents of time until the kill delivers itself into his hands, knowing nothing but the feeling of the rifle in his arms and the circle of a world at the end of his scope.

In any other scenario, he's useless. Worse than useless. A liability. As his handler reminded him every day.

The guards pull him down the dark corridor until the pain in his head overwhelms him and he blacks out on his feet again.


	2. The Sale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I said one or two chapters a week, but the prologue is short, so...
> 
> CW: brief mention of vomit.

 

"I don't understand why you won't just declare me fit for combat. You know what I can do," he says to the redheaded interviewer, the same woman from what little he remembers of the hostage exchange yesterday. Bucky sits stiffly in the civilian clothing SHIELD issued him, a t-shirt with Tony Stark's logo on it and plain black leggings to allow him maximum mobility. "I would be an asset to SHIELD. I'm cooperative. I follow directions. And the doctors said I wasn't a threat. They let me go."

"As we've explained to you previously, Sergeant Barnes," Ms. Romanov explains again, "we don't send operatives with untreated PTSD into the field, your excellent credentials notwithstanding." She glances down at the file where his kills and background are listed again. 

Though he carefully keeps his facial expression stony and indifferent, inside he's boiling with frustration. He didn't even say anything incriminating to the psychologists who examined him, not in any of the five separate hour-long sessions to which he was subjected after SHIELD brought him from Hydra, while they were figuring out how to do with them. He stuck to the bare details, how he worked under a handler, what he accomplished in the field. The psychs were unusually focused on his relationship with his handler. She was a tough boss, but not  _ traumatically _ tough, and the stuff he did in the field was just business. Where did he go wrong? He should have given them more detail, talked more about some fake feelings of camaraderie or regret, to convince them of his fitness to go back into the field immediately.

He's itching for the calm that only comes over him while he's sniping. It feels like lying at the bottom of a cool river, embraced by the water, watching the ripples steadily flow past above him. 

Being decommissioned is going very badly for him so far. SHIELD is keeping him in a holding cell -- a comfortable cell, much like a hotel room, but nonetheless locked from the outside -- and he's hardly stopped pacing for five days, practically in tears from nervous energy and boredom. He doesn't know what to do with himself. Getting a civilian job, as Ms. Romanov is suggesting... well, to say that it won't work out is a gross understatement.

Particularly a position as a  _ helpmeet _ . They think Bucky will be able to adjust to living in someone's  _ house _ ? 

"I don't have PTSD," Bucky says flatly. 

"Your examiners would apparently disagree. I'm sure we'll return to that point later. Most veterans deny it at first."

Bucky just snorts.

"Sergeant Barnes." The interviewer leans across the table towards him enticingly, folding her eyes and raising her eyebrows. "The placement we are offering you as a helpmeet is an excellent opportunity for you to re-adjust to civilian life as an American,  _ and  _ for you to prove your fitness for combat to the U.S. government and to SHIELD. Between you and me, SHIELD would love to have you on board as an operative the moment we can be absolutely sure of your mental stability. Taking this placement is a first step in that direction. High performance on this job will go a great distance towards showing my boss your loyalty to the United States and sufficient mental stability to handle combat situations without permanent trauma. This is simply a short probationary period prior to our agreement to hire you."

Bucky fixes his eyes on the file in front of Ms. Romanov, the file populated with records of his time with Hydra and his service to the U. S. military before that. He can only guess what details they've managed to glean from his broken and scattered paper trail. Which major assassination they know about. Of course, Hydra wiped his memories after each mission, so he doesn't have much more firsthand knowledge of his past than SHIELD does, doesn't actually remember performing the tasks SHIELD set out for him. However, Hydra required him to memorize and recite his own file each time they brought him out of cryo, as a way of testing his memory and giving him enough information about his past so he wouldn't panic from the amnesia. The litany of hits is engraved in his mind: dates, locations, names, faces he doesn't remember seeing except as grainy photographs filed away in his records. Seeing the full list in a stranger's hands is unnerving. At Hydra, only his handler had access to it.

When Bucky doesn't respond, Romanov continues, "I know the client SHIELD is offering you personally. He's a trustworthy man. Kind. The job will be a chance to get your feet back under you after your traumatic experience with Hydra." He opens his mouth, but Romanov keeps talking. "Yes, I know you don't think you're traumatized. Anyway, more to the point, your options at this junction are limited."

"List them," Bucky demands. "What else can I do?"

"Since you've been modified with Hydra's variant of the supersoldier serum, and because you have that weaponized arm," she nods to his metal left arm, which SHIELD has almost completely  _ de- _ weaponized, removing several projectile weapons and his favorite combat knife, though it's still inhumanly strong and could easily kill someone in a dozen ways, "SHIELD would like to keep eyes on you. My boss wants you to be under observation for at least a few weeks during the reintegration period, particularly since you've gone through alterations to your memory, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it. If you accept the placement as a helpmeet, our client will serve to monitor you. That's the least unpleasant way to go about this. He'll respect your privacy; we won't record audio or video or demand regular reports or anything like that. He'll only report back to us if there's cause for concern." She pauses, letting him turn that over for a moment. "If you choose  _ not _ to accept the placement, we'll monitor you anyway, but the methods will be less pleasant. There will be cameras. With audio. Probably confinement to a cell similar to the one you've been staying in for at least a few more weeks, if not longer, depending on how well my boss decides we can trust you. After your release, plainclothes agents will tail you. They'll be watching constantly, reporting back. If you try to evade detection or kill them, we'll have to resort to options that will be truly undignified and unpleasant for the both of us."

Bucky leans forward, past putting up any pretense of pleasantry or cooperation, and rests his forehead in his hands, staring down at the table. He knows SHIELD has him beat. As good an assassin and spy as he is, he's only one man; he can't evade all of their operatives. His mind is reeling with the abrupt change in his fortunes. One minute he's Hydra's favorite asset, a beloved weapon; the next SHIELD is crushing him between a rock and a hard place. His hands are starting to shake, just slightly, a tremor only he notices.

"What happens if I take the deal?"

"You'll stay one or two more nights in your cell while we hammer out the logistics. We'll ask the client how soon he wants you to move in and arrange your living quarters. Contracts will be written up on both sides, and both of you will read and sign them. The arrangement will go into effect in a week or so."

Bucky sits back, remaining silent and staring Romanov down. She stares back with equal intensity. "How long do I have to decide?"

"Take as much time as you like," she says. "But understand that we won't release you from this tower until you've made your decision and the proper paperwork is arranged, either way. The longer you delay, the longer you're stuck here."

He stands up and turns to leave Romanov's office without further comment. "Sergeant Barnes," she says to his back, and he stops. "I don't mind telling you that I was once on the other side of this desk, facing down this same choice. I'm sure you didn't imagine a job as a helpmeet when you signed on to the military. But if I were you, I'd take the deal. 

<<>>

Two more armed guards wait for him outside Romanov's office. They wordlessly walk him back to his cell. He has to admit the security in this place is pretty tight. There's video and audio monitoring basically everywhere, and they haven't left him alone for a moment since they bought him from Hydra. Not that he has any real plans to escape; Bucky is a tool and he doesn't care whether it's SHIELD or Hydra using him. The real problem he's trying to solve is that he only has one skill. He's nothing if he can't be a sniper. He's not going to do anything to try to sabotage or escape SHIELD, because they're the only people who can give that back to him. 

Nevertheless,  if he  _ did  _ want to escape from SHIELD or somehow take them down from the inside, he thinks it would actually be a real challenge. That's reassuring, in a way; at least the organization that owns him now is competent. 

The guards lock him back into his room. It's structured like a hotel room, with a full bed in the center, an array of desks and dressers (for which Bucky has no use because he has no belongings whatsoever at the moment), a TV he doesn't plan to watch, and a small ensuite bathroom. There's a Stark-issue tablet he can use to request necessities like food and clothes. There's no kitchen, and absolutely nothing in the way of weaponry. At some point, he remembers vaguely, SHIELD stripped him of all his knives and guns. He feels naked and unprotected without them. His arm is fine for taking out a few fighters at close range, but that's about all he can cover with it.

He doesn't want to think about the conversation he just had with Natasha, the contract that will lock him into some anonymous SHIELD agent's home for the next year if he signs it, that will lock him into Stark Tower indefinitely if he doesn't. He wants a distraction, time to mull over that decision in the back of his head without thinking about it directly. He walks into the suite as the guards lock the door behind him and leave.

There's a small living area, a semi-separate room off the bedroom, with two armchairs (which is ridiculous, since Bucky's the only occupant of the faux-apartment). At the back of that room there are a set of sliding glass doors leading to a balcony. He wanders out there now. It's early fall and the city air is cool and damp, faint sounds of cars passing below wafting up to him. Thin, but unexpectedly strong, bars cage the entire balcony, floor to ceiling, presumably to prevent him from jumping to the street below. Would he try that if there were no bars? Maybe. He already tested them, trying to pry two apart with the full force of his prosthetic, and he got nowhere. They may actually be made of vibranium, or just well-reinforced steel. His arm is strong, but not  _ that _ strong, and it's limited by the leverage he can get with his flesh hand.

Bucky lowers himself silently to the floor of the balcony and lies prone. Last night, in an effort to relieve some of the mounting tension he feels from being off-mission and out of cryofreeze for five or six consecutive days now, he dragged one of the plush pillows from the hotel bed out here. Now he draws it close to his body, tucking it up where his rifle would normally rest. He gazes at the apartment building across from the tower. He has selected three windows to watch, which are located more or less directly across from his balcony.

If he were on an assignment, which, a very confused and upset part of his brain keeps reminding him, he is not, and his handler had positioned him here in this suite, he would probably be trying to shoot someone in that apartment.

His breathing slows and his body relaxes as he focuses on those windows like a laser. Last night he saw the occupant, a man of about 6'2", making about $200,000 annually judging by his quarters or perhaps a bit more, nonsmoker, unmarried and likely childless. Bucky thinks he should be coming home soon if his schedule remains the same as it was last night.

Of course, Bucky can't actually shoot the man, or anyone else, since he's disarmed (well, except for his metal arm), and helpless. But he needs this calm, blank headspace, the peace cryo and having his memory wiped gives him. And he needs to practice the calm watchfulness he uses to snipe.

Soon enough SHIELD will realize how useful he can be to them and memory-wipe him to prepare him for his return to the field, and all the tumult of the last few days will be erased. Soon he'll be back in the field and all of this will be forgotten.

<<>>

It doesn't take long for his condition to start to deteriorate.

He jerks awake in the early morning when the sun is beginning to hint at rising, freezing cold, the echo of phantom recoil from a phantom gunshot vibrating through his shoulder and upper body. He's soaked in frigid sweat, and his clothes are clinging to him; for some reason he's not wearing his combat gear. He holds still, not sure where he is. Enemies could be all around him, in the room at his back, or across the street with their own scopes trained on his skull. For some reason he's clutching a pillow instead of his rifle, and his heart misses a beat when he realizes he doesn't have it. Is it inside the building? His heart is thrashing in his chest; his mouth is full of the warm, thick taste of copper. He fights not to cry out or even breathe too hard. How did he get here? Where  _ is _ he? 

He's lying on his stomach, and looking around wildly at the buildings around him, and finally more closely at the apartment building he can see through bars, and it comes back to him. That he's at SHIELD, in his cell. 

He gingerly lifts his head and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It comes away smeared with red, and when he opens his mouth and tilts his head forward a string of congealing blood drips out onto the floor. He bit his tongue hard enough to make it bleed in his sleep. 

He stands up, and he's steady, he's not confused anymore, but his hands are shaking worse now.  _ Fuck _ . He always starts to have problems after a week or so out of cryo. The memory wipe fixes it. Does SHIELD know that? Do they know they have to wipe him? He's beginning to think that they have no plans to do so. Why else would they be letting him start to fall apart like this?  _ Double fuck _ . He braces his hands on his knees, taking a few deep breath, then walks to the bathroom and spits into the sink, rinsing his mouth to clear it of the disgusting metal taste. He sobs once, harshly, but doesn't allow himself any more than that. He's probably being monitored, even now, by SHIELD. They can't be allowed to see his weakness.  _ No memories. No emotions. That's what makes me the best. _

He peels off his sweaty clothes, avoiding his reflection in the mirror, unhooks his prosthetic and grimaces at the still-foreign lightness on his left side while it's detached, and steps in the shower, leaving the curtain and the bathroom door to allow himself maximum awareness of his territory. He turns the cold water all the way up, and lets it run down his body, washing away the sweat. He stares numbly at the water swirling around the drain and spits blood again; the bleeding is beginning to slow. 

He rinses his tangled hair and finger-combs it out roughly before shutting off the water. Still dripping wet, he walks back to the bedroom and picks up the Stark tablet, balancing it on one knee, and turns it on. He opens the contract for the job and begins to read.

If he's honest with himself, though, he knows before reading it that he's eventually going to sign it. He needs this job. He needs SHIELD. He's going to need them to wipe him  _ very _ soon. He can't live under observation in a locked cell like this. He just can't. He's useless here; his talents are going to waste. Maybe the helpmeet position will at least involve bodyguarding. Maybe his client will order him around, give him things to do, give him structure in his life so at least he's not at loose ends like this.

He knows Romanov has a background as an assassin, of course. She's relatively unknown in the U. S., which is just how the government wants it, but she's actually quite famous in certain circles and overseas. The more he thinks about her cryptic comment about being on the other side of the desk, her suggestion that Bucky take the contract, the more it intrigues him. What could service as a helpmeet possibly have done for her? Did it domesticate her, turn her into a defanged administrator whose primary job is to coax assets like Bucky out of the field, a task that makes no sense, given SHIELD's ostensible goals? Or is there something more to what she said to him? Something truly useful about the work? Something he could learn from it, or somewhere for him to flex his skills?

He's at least going to read the contract before he rejects it.

He locates the contract on the tablet, right where Romanov said it would be, opens it up, and begins to read. 

<<>>

Bucky finds the contract to be frustratingly vague. It lays out a very wide range of potential tasks, including everything from cooking and cleaning to bodyguarding to, surprisingly, sex. Bucky wouldn't have expected SHIELD to offer an ex-Hydra supersoldier a helpmeet position with a possible sex-work component, but clearly he has misjudged them.

However, every item in the list of possible duties is qualified with a "conditional on desires of both parties" clause and similar legalese, which makes it impossible to tell what Bucky can and can't be  _ required _ to do as part of the position. The client has apparently indicated that he's looking for what's known as a domestic helpmeet, someone whose primary duties are to assist with activities around the house, but he hasn't ruled out most of the other items on the list, as far as Bucky can tell.

Besides the signature page, there are also several pages of forms asking Bucky which of the activities he'd be willing to do, as a way of testing his compatibility with the client. Each item (cooking simple meals, cooking complex meals, grocery shopping, cleaning bathrooms, cleaning living spaces, cleaning bedrooms, the list goes on) has boxes next to it for "yes", "no", and "maybe". He thinks for a moment, then begins running down the row and checking "yes" for everything. If the alternative is confinement in this cell for weeks on end with no prospects of release, he'll do basically anything.

When he hits the section about sex acts, he hesitates and finally decides to check them all as "maybe". Bucky has faint memories of handlers who would require him to service them sexually. He does not think he enjoyed it. And some of the sex acts, like rope bondage, sound terrifying to him. But he doesn't want to check "no" on something the client requires and be rejected for the position. He's not sure if SHIELD would match him with a different client if an incompatibility like that arose, but he doesn't want to risk it.

As he pages through the contract, he's beginning to realize that this position could be more of a serious commitment than Bucky originally thought. He hadn't really thought through the actual work, had struggled to even imagine himself inside a home, belonging there. Although his duties are left vague, the contract clarifies that he will be on call to help with whatever the client wants him to help with (within reason) for eight-hour shifts every day, with one or two days off per week at the client's discretion.

In short, Bucky will be giving up a significant chunk of his freedom for a random person he's never even met.

Of course, the contract is  _ technically _ at-will. However, he doesn't fail to notice the clause at the bottom of the last page that states, "One year (365 consecutive days, with allowances for standard days off, vacation days, and sick or medical leave) of service in this placement without the incurring of a formal complaint or request for transfer from the client will constitute proof of mental competency and entitles the helpmeet to apply with priority status for a paid, full-time position as a Level 1 SHIELD agent."

In other words, this contract is Bucky's golden ticket out of this stupid cell and, eventually, out of his client's stupid house (Bucky hasn't seen it yet, but he knows he's going to hate it after working outdoors in the Russian taiga for decades)... as long as he can hold himself together for 365 consecutive days, the year mandated by the contract.

He grips the tablet pen and signs decisively on the dotted line. 

<<>>

The first time he has a flashback, he's still staying in SHIELD's hotel-room-slash-prison-cell.

Bucky was operating really well when Hydra first sold him to SHIELD. Those first six or twelve hours are also his best. When he's lucky, he gets the whole mission completed, the hit finished, in a few hours, marches to the extraction point, and is wiped and frozen again before his performance has a chance to degrade.

He was woken from cryo, loaded onto a transport. By the time he was on the airplane to America, the heavy fog of his first few hours had begun to wear off. Time had begun to stitch itself together, coalescing from disjointed snippets of perception into a continuous stream of perception that flowed naturally from moment to moment. From the airplane, he was transferred to a chopper, and that was when he became aware enough to start asking his handler for details of the mission, where he was going, which of course enraged her because they weren't  _ on  _ a mission. 

Then they turned him over to SHIELD in exchange for whatever ridiculous sum of money was in that heavy briefcase.

Bucky was rock-solid steady through his entire interview with Nicholas Fury, who had conducted a sort of impromptu trial to guide his integration into SHIELD. He wanted to decide if Bucky could be rehabilitated into a full agent, or if he would be handled by a SHIELD employee directly. They locked him into a room with people he assumed were SHIELD higher-ups in sharp suits and a one-eyed man who was introduced as Fury, who asked a litany of questions about the type of work he did, the activities in which he had participated with Hydra. 

Unsure how to answer, Bucky had launched into his laundry list of hits: “Jesse Kapanen, June 16, 1957.” His first. A young man. Bucky had never learned why Hydra wanted him taken out. “Mhairi Reilly, August 28, 1957. Aino Helkovaara, December 2, 1957.” The first time he had been referred to by his handler as ‘the Winter Soldier.’ Also his first hit with a proper sniper rifle -- it was around then that Hydra discovered his gift for the weapon while training him, the way the mind-blankness induced by cryofreeze allowed him to stay in one position, staring at one target, for hours on end, and never feel a moment of impatience or anxiety that would cause his grip to waver. “Heidi Rasimus... Mario Starček... Joseph Peralta...” Fury let him continue until the mid-1960s. Then: “That’s enough, Sergeant Barnes.” 

Fury had asked questions about the weapons Bucky had used, the locations of the bases in which he had worked, even about how Bucky was treated by his guards. ("You mean my handlers?")

He had behaved professionally throughout the entire interview, although at times he felt anxiety, even panic, welling up in him as he tried to answer concisely and to the best of his ability Fury's questions. He hadn't had to speak this much while so freshly out of cryo in years; when Hydra wanted verbal performance out of him they would wait until the end of his waking period, a day or two after he had been un-frozen, and ask him to speak then. He fumbled words, mixed up details. He was sweating in streams from his armpits and down his back, and he felt cold electricity shooting through his limbs. 

He sat still, spoke only when spoken to, and tried his best to follow all of Fury's directives. A skilled operative would never let his face or voice betray his emotions unless he chose to do so, so Bucky showed no emotion. He simply described the violent acts he'd carried out, the work he had done for Hydra, without letting grief or guilt bubble up from within him.

Because he was a machine.

_ No memories. No emotions.  _

The calm blankness from the cryo was already dissipating, but Bucky held onto it as best he could, pulling it over him like a veil that could soften the sharp edges of the world.

Now, back in his cell, these first frissons of emotional awareness are coming harder and faster, quickly becoming overwhelming. This always happens when he's out of cryo for long enough -- he starts to feel guilt, regret, even things like loneliness, contrary to all of his training. That's when he has a mission or training to distract him. Locked up in SHIELD's headquarters, there's  _nothing_ to take his mind off the fact that he's slowly losing his grip on himself. It just keeps building up. So of course eventually the dam breaks.

In the evening of the day after he signed the contract, he's in the shower letting the water sluice down his back, trying to relax enough to be able to go to sleep. He has the bathroom lights off because he's more comfortable at night, having done so much of his work between dusk and dawn over the past century. He lifts his head and glances through the shower door, catching sight of the blurred haloes of the streetlamps on the road below.

And then, suddenly, he's not showering any more. Between one second and the next, he's transported somewhere cold and dark, the beginnings of frostbite setting into his fingers and toes in a sharp contrast to the hot water that was washing over him just seconds ago. It's another time he was staring through the night at far-off lights.

He knows, one some level, that it's a memory, but it spools out before his eyes as though it was happening for the first time. It's not only visual: he can feel the limb of the pine tree in which he's perched cutting off the circulation to his left leg. His hands -- and yes, he has two, both flesh in the memory -- are solid, cradling his ever-present rifle firmly without choking it. His hair is lank around his shoulders, heavy with a crust of frost. The scent of pine sap spikes the air. The scent blends with the smell of distant gunpowder on the wind.

His mark is a stocky, black-haired youth, a member of the Russian army training in these barracks with his friends. Young, jovial Russians all of them, diverse in gender and size but all in their 20s or 30s, pale-skinned from the fleeting winter days suffused with only the weakest rays of sunlight, but strong and hale nonetheless.

Bucky has waited in the tree for a day and a half with only protein bars with which his handler supplied him and melted snow to drink, waiting patiently for a shot at the mark. And finally, here he is, exiting through the back door of the compound accompanied by two friends. One of them unzips and begins to micturate into the snow; the other two are talking, laughing, touching each others' shoulders. Drunk.

A breath of wind passes Bucky, carrying the faint scent of urine to him as he minutely adjusts his grip on the rifle, readying his finger on the trigger. The urinating man is eclipsing Bucky's mark, making the shot difficult. Bucky could certainly shoot him now, over the other man's shoulder, but he would prefer to wait for the clearer shot he knows is coming in a moment when the trio turn to go back inside. He lines himself up with his scope and waits.

Sure enough, the mark turns around and the man who was urinating zips up and walks inside the barracks, leaving Bucky a clear shot at the mark.

Then something strange happens, something that Bucky did not anticipate, did not understand at the time and still doesn't understand now. The mark moves towards his friend, gazing at him directly, and his friend doesn't move away. In fact, the friend begins to lean in towards the mark. Hyperfocused on the tiny circular world portrayed through the sniper scope,  Bucky sees the individual muscles of the friend's face relax and his mouth curl into a lazy smile. The mark smiles in return and closes his eyes, lifting his arms, reaching out towards the friend. He cups the sides of his friend's face to pull him closer, closing his eyes, and --

Bucky will never know what would have happened next, what even the weird, coiling feeling in his stomach presaged. One shot. The sound sears across the mountaintop ridge atop which the barracks are perched. 

Bucky's hyperfocus slips away as the shot dies away and he draws back from the scope as soon as he sees the mark drop, knowing that he's dead. He slings his rifle back over his back and slides down out of the tree, the bark scraping over his gloved palms, as the barracks erupt in sound. Guards sprint towards the gate, but none have seen him, and Bucky is already gone, protected by the dense and labyrinthine forest, taking his time creeping silently through the snow towards the extraction point. 

Then, without warning, he's back in the shower, only now all of his senses are turned up to eleven, and his heart is stuttering with panic. The roar of the water is deafening; it falls in freezing needles across his back; he must have run the hot water down to nothing. He's shaking, shivering, and weak, crouching in the bathtub. He launches himself out of the tub, landing with a thump on the bathmat, and darts back to his bedroom, away from the thunder of the water. 

Oh god, what did he do to that young man?

That must have been years ago, decades, back when he still had both arms. He regains his bearings slowly, first remembering his location in Stark's tower, then the year. He can hear his strained breaths whistling in his throat. He can't get enough air. Actually it feels like his airways are collapsing. Like an asthma attack, except he can't have those because of the serum. He sinks to his knees beside the bed, fisting his hands in the white duvet, tearing it with his left hand, fighting for breath, his chest heaving as if he's just sprinted for miles, sucking in air; he feels the tips of his fingers and toes start to tingle with hypoxia. He tries to think clearly, to control his breathing. Surely the tablet lying beside his bed has an emergency number he can call. He'll suffocate, he needs help. He reaches out for it...

But he can't, he realizes. If there's something physically wrong with him, he can't let SHIELD know or they'll never clear him for combat. 

A few long seconds later of kneeling on the floor and clutching at his chest, he thinks the weight is beginning to let up, the constricting spasm of his chest loosening slightly. He sucks in air greedily, his gasping sounding like half a sob, half a laugh.

_ That poor man _ , he thinks. Bucky  _ shot _ him. He remembers it vividly, the spray of red as he dropped away from the point of impact. How his body stilled instantly, one moment a live human, the next a ragdoll collapsing into the snow. He remembers hearing the shrill screams of the mark's friend as Bucky disappeared into the trees, numb, feeling nothing.

He lets go of the duvet, a few feathers falling away from the holes his left hand tore, and braces his hands on his knees, overwhelmed by disgust for himself. And yet this was his job. Assassination is what he  _ does _ . He can't feel guilty for being who he is, for being an extension of his handler. Whatever his handler ordered, he did. Bucky was, is still, a tool for others to wield, not a moral agent.

And yet the thought of Bucky shooting the man visceral disgusts him. He  _ regrets _ it, wonders why he didn't think at the time to lower the rifle, to... to disobey.

He hears a voice in his head, the voice of his handler. "What is a professional? One step away from a machine. No memories, no emotions..." He always gets confused like this when she's not there to guide him. But it's worse, knowing she won't be coming back, that he has to maintain all his training without her. 

Something hot rises in his throat and he barely has the presence of mind left to leap up and run back into the bathroom before he vomits. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, then stands to turn off the still-running shower. He has a bad headrush, glittering nonsense overtaking his vision for a second, and he has to sit and put his head between his legs and breathe slowly until they clear. Finally he crawls to the edge of the tub and shuts off the water. The white noise stops assaulting him, and a disturbing silence is left in its place, the sound of Bucky alone with his tangled thoughts, the feelings he desperately tries to repress, bracing his trembling body against the lip of the bathtub. 

He spends a few more minutes shaking on the floor of the bathroom before he comes to his senses enough to be horrified with himself. It's not acceptable for him to be out of control like this. His handler would have had him severely punished for this kind of slip. Just because they're not here doesn't mean he can allow this type of unruly, unpredictable behavior to occur. He's a tool, and a tool doesn't need to have emotions or a conscience. Those are the domain of his handlers, the people who make all his decisions for him.

_ What are you? ... One step away from a machine. _

He schools his features into a neutral expression and gets up to splash frigid water across his face. He dries himself off, then drinks straight out of the sink for a minute. Stiffly he walks back into the bedroom and sits down on the bed. Night has fallen, and he needs to be alert tomorrow for his follow-up meeting with Romanov about his placement as a helpmeet.

He lays his unhooked prosthetic in bed next to him so nobody can steal it, then lies down on his back with his arm crossed over his chest, the way Hydra always arranged him to be put back into cryo, and angrily ignores the dull headache pounding behind his eyes.

The farther he gets from the calm blankness of cryofreeze, the more difficult it is to hold himself together. The tremors in his hands have been worsening, and he feels touchy and jumpy. And now there's this, a full-blown, debilitating flashback. He hasn't been awake or alert enough to have emotions this intense or complex in decades. He hasn't been forced to make this many decisions for himself, either -- when and whether to shower and sleep and eat, what to wear. He needs to get a grip -- what just happened in the shower  _can't_ happen again.

A machine doesn't panic like that, and that's the end of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Natasha Romanov tells Bucky that SHIELD won't put him back into the field as a sniper because he has PTSD, which he denies. She offers him a job as a helpmeet for another SHIELD operative and says that if he can perform those tasks successfully, SHIELD will hire him as an operative. Bucky goes back to his cell and considers the offer; he doesn't like the idea of the job but thinks he will have to take it if he wants to get put back in combat positions. Later, he has a flashback to a hit in Russia where he killed a young soldier. This causes him to have a panic attack, during which he vomits. As he's recovering, he admonishes himself for his guilt and confusion over the hit and resolves to be less emotional in the future.


	3. Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the encouraging comments so far!! :)

He's steadier the following morning and takes his time getting ready for the meeting, showering, hooking his prosthetic into its anchor and securing the straps across his body, brushing out and tying back his long hair, and dressing in Stark-issue sweats. He walks to Romanov's office (escorted by a guard, but only one this time instead of a whole retinue) fifteen minutes before the meeting time that showed up on his tablet. Although he's early, when she hears him sit down outside she opens the door to invite him in. As he enters she's closing a futuristic-looking laptop made of frosted, silvery metal and spiderwebbed with a luminous blue design. Natasha herself has her hair down, and is dressed professionally in tan slacks and a white button-down. It makes Bucky feel underdressed, but he hides his discomfort, sitting up straight.

After they exchange pleasantries, she gets right to business. "We've finalized the arrangement with your client, and he's signed the contract and looks forward to meeting you. I can give you a little more information on him now, if you want." Bucky nods. "He's a SHIELD agent. I know him personally. His name is Steven Rogers, but he goes by Steve. He's had a series of helpmeets in the past and none of them have filed any complaints against them, although one or two have been incompatible. He's indicated that he prefers you call him by his first name as soon as you're comfortable.

"You'll have morning and evening hours in his employ, with free time during the middle of the weekdays while Steve is at work here. In addition you'll have most of the weekends off. Your work schedule, of course, is subject to Steve's needs, but he's required to notify you 24 hours in advance of any changes made to what's indicated in the contract.

"You will be living in a small suite that's part of Steve's apartment, with a bedroom and a kitchenette. If at some point you wish to move out to your own quarters and commute to Steve's, you'll have to work that out with him, but I assure you he will be amenable to whatever you suggest. Any questions so far?"

"No, go on."

"Okay. This figure will be your weekly take-home pay, all taxes already deducted." She flips the contract around to face him and indicates a number. Bucky starts inwardly, though he manages to keep his face blank. The figure is much higher than he would have expected, given the pay brackets listed on the preliminary contract he signed. "The salary isn't open to negotiation. Is this acceptable to you?"

"Yes," Bucky says quickly. The pay isn't the important thing, anyway. What's important is convincing SHIELD to put him back into combat as soon as possible.

"Great. If you're ready, you can start as soon as tomorrow. On your chosen start date, I'll escort you to Steve's apartment. It's policy with SHIELD that when we place a helpmeet, their contact with SHIELD -- so me, in this case -- stays in the neighborhood on call for the first six hours you spend together, so we can respond quickly if there's a problem of any kind. So we'll leave you alone together, but you won't be defenseless in the unlikely event that something goes wrong."

"That really won't be necessary," Bucky states flatly. The guy probably has more to fear from Bucky than Bucky does from him. In fact, maybe that's the real reason Romanov wants to stick around.

"Be that as it may, that's our policy," she demurs. "After that period, you'll be able to contact me at this number. You'll keep your tablet and we'll issue you a smartphone as well, since you don't have one. My number will be programmed in as an emergency contact. We'll also send you with a wardrobe of the kind of clothes you requested while you were here. The default dress code is all black, unless you request something different using the tablet." Bucky's not sure why they think he would want to choose his own wardrobe, but he nods anyway. "I encourage you to call me if you have any questions, problems, anything at all. As I said, I've been on the other side of this desk before. And if I can't help you with whatever you bring up, I have contacts with SHIELD who can. Understand?"

"I understand." There's no way Bucky is going to call her, ever, for any reason. He handles his problems alone. That's how it's always been.

As if reading his mind, she says, "I'm serious, okay? If something goes wrong, you call. It's part of the contract. Okay, I think that should be all. I'll come to your quarters to pick you up at 8. Any questions?"

He shakes his head.

"Then you're dismissed. See you tomorrow, James."

<<>>

Romanov drives Bucky to Steve's townhouse in a fancy-looking sleek black car, nothing like the armored vans Hydra used to transport him in, although Bucky recognizes bulletproof glass in the windows and safety features a little beyond what a civilian vehicle would have. She has him sit in the passenger seat in the front, another novelty. Hydra used to throw him into the back of the van like baggage. They wouldn't bother to bind him, knowing he was either too disoriented to escape or that he was well under the control of his handler. 

Steve turns out to live in a townhouse only about five minutes away from the Stark tower. Bucky is nervous, uncomfortable in the black t-shirt and jeans he was issued, but he doesn't fidget. He stares straight ahead out the car window as they pull up. A damp, cool fall fog clings to the streets. Steve's driveway is blanketed in flattened yellow ginkgo leaves, overlapping each other like scales.

It's weird entering a residential neighborhood as an actual tenant. Bucky has seen the world on his missions with Hydra; though he has few concrete memories, he has built up an innate familiarity with the idea of a house or a store. He even has a vague picture of what the inside of the house will look like, though it's cobbled together from a hundred indistinct suggestions of things he may once have experienced with no details or specifics. What's really unfamiliar is the idea that he could actually  _ belong  _ here. Before, he was always an intruder creeping through these domestic and mundane settings. Now he's actually moving into such a place. It's more than a little strange.

"It's fine if you're nervous," Romanov says as she parks the car.

"I'm not nervous."   


"Well, it would be fine if you were." 

Bucky opens his door and climbs out of the car. He feels utterly naked, outside without a single knife or gun on his person, no weapons but his arm. Romanov claimed he wouldn't be needing weapons for this assignment. She reissued him the combat knife that locks into a slot in his metal arm, but she didn't allow him anything else. Bucky  _ knows _ she's an assassin, so she must know there's no such thing as not needing weapons. An unexpected fight is the most dangerous kind. The only remedy is to be ready for violence, always. He figures the real reason they didn't issue him anything for self-defense is for the sake of his client. SHIELD doesn't trust him; they think he might be a danger to Rogers. 

Bucky doesn't intend to prove them right, but his first priority in the house, if Steve lets him alone for any amount of time, will be to find everything he  _ could _ use as a weapon and mentally catalog their locations. Surely Rovers at least has kitchen knives, and maybe some heavy fireplace tools or something. If he can't have a sniper rifle -- and he has no doubt SHIELD is watching the black markets in this area and will figure it out if he saves up and buys one -- he can at least have that.

His train of thought is interrupted by Rogers' front door opening. 

The man in the doorway... well, the headshot Romanov showed him didn't exactly do him justice. 

Bucky has to hold back a little gasp and almost steps back when he sees Rogers for the first time. Bucky's nothing if not prepared -- he looked Rogers up last night on the tablet SHIELD left in his cell, so he knows the man is enhanced like he is. But Rogers is different. Before the serum, Bucky was a whip of a guy; he's strong now and more muscular than most humans, but not in a showy way, with a slender form like a well-muscled racing dog. Rogers, on the other hand, is a brick house. He's wearing some kind of stretchy shirt that's tight across his chest (though any shirt would be tight there, on him, from what Bucky can see, which is rather a lot) and faded blue jeans. His eyes are ice blue, and his straight golden hair is pushed away from his forehead as though his bangs are just a little too long and would fall in his eyes otherwise. The sun is shining on him from behind Bucky and catches sparkles of stubble along his jaw. He's smiling, leaning up against the doorway, perfectly relaxed in the presence of not only Bucky but  _ two _ world-class assassins known for their crimes against America.

Of course, Bucky  _ knows  _ he's not straight. Intellectually, at least. He vaguely remembers having been attracted to men before Hydra got him. Hydra beat the impulse out of him while he was in their employ. There was simply no time for that, and his mind and body were usually too frayed, or too numb from the memory wiping, to entertain thoughts of attraction.

That's not to say he's attracted to Rogers. In fact, he absolutely  _ cannot _ be, he realizes. He's going to be working in close quarters with him for the next year. Attraction would be beyond inconvenient. This is simply another irrational emotional impulse he has to compartmentalize and store away.

Luckily, Bucky is  _ great _ at that.

Steve, thankfully, focuses on Romanov first while all this is running through Bucky's head. "Natasha. It's always a pleasure." He turns to Bucky, fixes him with a clear, appraising gaze. "And you must be James."

James? Does Rogers  _ really  _ think they're going to be on a first name basis on day one? He's still not sure if Romanov was serious when she told him that Rogers wanted Bucky to call him Steve. Bucky stares down at the cement front stoop and mutters, "Bucky."

"That's what he actually goes by," Romanov supplies. "It's from his middle name, Buchanan." Bucky can feel himself going red to the tips of his ears. Not for the first time, he wonders what the fuck he, a world-class sniper, is doing taking a job as a helpmeet in some SHIELD agent's house.  _ It's only for a year. Just be a machine.  _ He sucks in a deep breath.

"Well, come in," Rogers says, backing into the foyer, and Bucky catches his piercing blue eyes again. A wave of something dizzying crashes over him -- fear? -- and it's slow to recede. He steps unsteadily through the threshold into the house, feeling as if he's just passed a point of no return. "We can come back to this part of the tour," Rogers says, leading them further into the house. "I wanted to show you your rooms first. Is that alright?"

Bucky nods. "Yes, sir."

Steve grimaces, making Bucky flinch. "Please call me Steve. I don't really like titles." He looks at Bucky expectantly.

"Yes... Steve." It comes out as a bit of a growl, but at least he tried. Steve's brow furrows, but he lets it go.

He leads Bucky through a homey sitting room with a few armchairs, a television, and a hearth. (And yes, Bucky does see a rack of iron fireplace tools. A good start.) The house has large windows along the exterior walls, and it's decorated in light blues and yellows that reflect natural light deep into the house. Beautiful, but difficult for a team of one to defend. The townhouse is clearly expensive, but decorated to telegraph "home" rather than "money". 

As they cross the room, Bucky peers into the room adjacent to the sitting area. Along one wall is a long desk with a switched-off desktop computer and a few file folders scattered across the glossy white surface. Steve's office, Bucky surmises. In the other corner is something Bucky hasn't seen in years: a living room grand piano. He picks up the "Steinway & Sons" mark on the inside of the fall board. The top board rests on the long prop, the graceful curve of the lifted board sweeping into the room, sunlight glinting off the strings. Interesting. Steve probably plays; if he didn't he would leave the top board down.

He stops and stares at the piano for a moment, his head filling with a weird, pressurized feeling, like a memory waiting to rush back. Like the echo of a sound, as if he stepped into a room just as the last chord of a song he didn't hear was fading away, left on the edge of his awareness. He furrows his brow.

As he stares something does begin to come back, but it's not anything to do with the piano itself. It's the voice, the voice of his handler -- his ex-handler -- asking him,  _ "What are you?" _

_ "A professional," _ remembered Bucky says. Unlike last night, he's not entirely immersed in the memory. He can still see the piano in the other room as he struggles to maintain his awareness, can feel his flesh hand gripping the white trim around the doorway so hard the sharp edge of it cuts into his palm. It's more like he's stepped halfway into a river, the water flowing past him without enveloping him. He knows where he is, that the memory isn't real, and yet he's powerless to stop it, can't move, can hardly breathe, as it plays out silently in his mind.

_ "Right," his handler says in Russian, "The best in your field. Our protégé. And what is a professional?" This time she doesn't wait for Bucky to answer. "One step away from a machine. A small step. A professional is controlled. Predictable." She reaches towards his face, and he flinches, but can't get away. He's held down. Her dry thumb sweeps a tear from his cheek. He shudders. He's strapped to a chair, the sort of thing you might see in a dentist's office, only this is cutting-edge military technology designed to restrain and subdue a supersoldier. He can't move his wrists; this is a memory from long ago, but not so long ago that he doesn't know enough not to try his restraints. In fact, his handler barely needs them anymore, soon will just order him into the chair, tell him to stay still, and he'll obey. _

_ He knows why she's hurting him. He took several precious minutes on his last mission getting a civilian -- a child -- out of the line of fire before he provoked the gunfight with the enemy. It wasn't part of the description of the mission. He was supposed to take out the targets as fast as possible, with no regard for life or property sacrificed along the way. His handler had explained that taking out the targets was more important than anything else; it didn't matter what else happened as long as the SHIELD operatives died as fast as possible and he got out without being seen. _

_ He's not sure why he disobeyed. He will never do it again. Not after this. _

_ "A professional does what he is told and no more. There is no room for emotions. No room for mistakes, like the ones we discussed from your last mission. Do you understand? There is only room for the task and nothing else. That is what your client demands. And you do so well. Most of the time. Your training is still incomplete."  _

_ Remembered Bucky nods once. A rubber bit is gripped in his teeth, preventing him from speaking,  _ and he's in Steve's house, but the rubber is still in his mouth, brushing the back of his throat, and he finally shakes free of the memory. His throat locks up in response to the imagined bit and he gags quietly, spasming, stifling it at the last second so that nothing is heard but a cough muffled into one hand.

The whole thing has taken only a second or two. Bucky feels shaky, disoriented. He jerks his hand off the doorway and snaps back to attention. His palm stings where he was gripping the doorway to the office-slash-piano-room to keep himself upright. Steve is looking askance at him from where he's moved ahead into the hallway, Romanov waiting impatiently behind him. "Do you play?" Steve asks him, glancing at the piano.

Bucky shakes his head, although he has no idea whether he plays or not. 

Steve simply nods at Bucky's lapse. Maybe he didn't notice his distraction. Bucky hopes he didn't. He doesn't want to be punished on his first day with Rogers... with Steve. "I hope you don't mind if I practice sometimes," Steve says. Bucky nods.

He has to pay better attention, stay alert. He can't allow himself to be tempted by the memories that are streaming back. He needs to compartmentalize them -- he can figure them out when he's alone. For now he needs to stay present. 

They walk through a modern kitchen with a gas range and two fancy ovens, white subway tile on the walls and bright turquoise tiles on the floor. Steve walks by it all without comment, turns right down a hallway, and opens a door. "Here are your rooms."

A cozy bedroom is set up, with buttery, cream-colored walls and a full-size bed (and what, exactly, is he supposed to do with all that space?) against one wall. A natural wood desk sits in front of a window, and there's a matching dresser. The two wide windows are veiled with sheer curtains that Bucky will either need to remove or replace with something heavier; they obscure his view of the outside while still allowing someone to look in.

Adjoining the bedroom is a kitchenette, consisting of a few feet of counter space, a full-size refrigerator and freezer, and a range and oven combination, and a couple of empty shelves and cupboards.

Bucky isn't sure what to say. It strikes him that he hasn't really had a bedroom of his own since before Hydra, who rarely allowed him natural sleep, preferring to hold him in cryo. The closest he had with them was the stretcher they'd strap him down to and his cryochamber, though he was always unconscious by the time he was actually in there, anesthetized and pumped full of antifreeze. 

This is nothing like a cryochamber. 

Steve is behind him, having ushered Bucky a few steps into the room, onto the thick carpet. "So? What do you think?" 

"It's... adequate for my needs," Bucky tries. Damn it, that's not what he meant. It's beyond adequate. In fact, it's a total waste of resources. He should probably tell Steve he can just sleep on the floor, but he doesn't want to speak more than necessary in case Steve expects him only to respond to questions, so he just leaves it at that.

Steve's face falls a little, and he looks like he's about to say something, but Romanov puts a hand on his arm to catch his attention and minutely shakes his head. Steve exhales and sighs, "I hope you can be comfortable here."

Bucky nods to Steve. Actually, he hopes  _ not _ to get too comfortable. He must stay alert here and perform well. He must not become complacent. But he knows Steve is just trying to be polite.

"I know the place is small, but we tried to give you enough room for your things," Steve goes on obliviously. "I mean, I know you didn't bring much from the tower, but when you buy more clothes and stuff, there should be room."

If Bucky didn't know better, he'd say that Steve, staring at him expectantly again, is trying to  _ please _ him. "Thank you." That seems to go over better -- Steve smiles.

Steve walks him through the rest of the house, going so far as to open the door to his own bedroom and show Bucky the inside. Like the rest of the house, it's painted a light color, in this case mint. The furniture in here is a little less modern, though. The bed and dresser are simple, unstained wood and look handmade, with exposed dovetail joints. There's a crocheted blanket draped across the foot of the bed. Several photos hang on the walls, including Steve's mother and father, both deceased, whom he points out to Bucky. A large bookshelf stands by the window, full to capacity with paperbacks, hardbacks, and ring-bound notebooks. 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the room is a small easel set up in the corner with a canvas on it and the beginnings of a sketch of a nude man. When Steve catches Bucky looking at it, he ushers him back out of the room, blushing. "That's just a hobby," he says apologetically as he steers Bucky and Romanov back towards the kitchen.

"I think I'll leave you two to it," Romanov says in her usual breezy, unaffected manner. "You seem to be getting along just fine. I'm sure I'll be hearing from you, Bucky," she adds, a veiled order. Steve walks her to the door, and she collects her backpack. Steve embraces her before she goes. Bucky watches with interest. The two of them are quite close; after a second she wraps her arms around him, returning the embrace. Then she exits and drives off.

Once Romanov is gone, Steve turns his attention back to Bucky. "I thought I'd give you something simple to get you started today, since it's your first day on the job. I've been really busy with work this week and I haven't had time to clean the kitchen. Let me show you where the supplies are." Steve leads Bucky to a closet at the end of the hall and points out sponges and various cleaners. He hands Bucky a bottle of spray and a sponge, and instructs him to wipe down the counters and the kitchen table and then clean the floor. "I took a few hours off work this morning, so I'll be here if you need me, but I'm going to be finishing up a few tasks in the office. That's the room you saw earlier, with the piano. Let me know when you're done. And feel free to poke around and figure out where everything is."

Bucky is a bit insulted to be cleaning a kitchen on his first day on the job, frustrated he's not allowed to go out and actually kill something or steal something or break something for his new employer, something a little less menial than tidying Steve's kitchen. But he blanks his mind because those emotions aren't useful and starts in on the counters after memorizing the locations of everything on them and moving it all -- stray dishes, bottles of oil and spices -- to the kitchen table.

The counters themselves aren't too bad, but the range is filthy, and when he gets there he dismantles it, being careful not to crush anything with his prosthetic hand, and moves all the components in the sink to be scrubbed individually.

His mind drifts as he works, noting the shaking in his hands, which has been growing more severe over the past few days. Will it eventually recede, or is this permanent? The thought sends a spike of fear through him. He doesn't want to lose his ability as a sniper, his only real talent. He doesn't know how to have relationships with people other than his handlers, and he never properly went to school past a high school diploma he just  _ barely _ managed to earn. He doesn't have a single hobby or interest besides his work. He doesn't even know if he enjoys cleaning kitchens or not. Outside of his sniping, who  _ is _ Bucky Barnes? If he's not the best sniper in the world, Hydra's invaluable asset, then what does that leave him?

He scrubs at the range fiercely. He supposes it leaves him someone who either likes or hates scrubbing a stove, and he's determined to find out which it is.

<<>>

He takes about an hour going over every detail of the counter until it's spotless, dismantling the range and cleaning every burner individually, and wiping down the fronts of the cabinets. Then he moves everything back from the kitchen table. He scrubs off the kitchen table, too. There had been a layer of grime over everything; the sponge is almost black from what was on the stove. He's seen glimpses of the same neglect through the whole house -- although there isn't much in the way of clutter, a lot of the furniture is coated in dust, and it looks like nobody has vacuumed in quite a while.

He wants to mop the floor, but he's not sure he should get the mop and floor cleaner without Steve's permission.

He decides to sneak over to Steve's office and see what he's doing. He glides down the hallway to where he can peer into the room, avoiding the sight of the piano while trying not to even think about the piano that he's trying to avoid. Steve doesn't hear him approach. He's seated at his desk in an office chair with his back to Bucky, one hand on the computer mouse, the other running through his shiny hair. He has one ankle crossed over the other knee, an open and relaxed posture that also signals power. 

Bucky has a great view of the breadth of Steve's shoulders and his tapered waist. He lingers there for a moment, watching him and trying to gauge the situation, how Steve would react to being interrupted.

Eventually he decides to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and goes to get the mop.

He finds the mop in a hall closet and finishes with the floor, then cleans up all his supplies and make sure everything is back in the right place in the cleaning cabinet, and yes, he may be stalling a bit so he doesn't talk to Steve again. The man intimidates him.

Finally he's left with no choice to walk back to the office and tap on the doorway to get Steve's attention.

Steve turns around. "Are you finished?" Bucky nods mutely. "Well, let's see it."

Bucky walks him back into the kitchen. The whole routine feels childish, like Bucky's handing some elementary-school pasta-glued-to-paper art project to his teacher and hoping they'll like it. It's degrading.

No. He can't think like that. This is the first of 365 days of this job. He can't think of it as a choice, something that could be better or worse. It is a mission -- mandatory. There's no use feeling one way or another about it, thinking of it as good or bad or degrading or fun or anything else.

Steve, meanwhile, eyes the kitchen with one eyebrow cocked. "Wow. I haven't seen it this clean..." He pushes his hair back again and laughs. "Probably since I moved in, if I'm being honest. Thanks, Bucky. You did a really nice job." And he smiles warmly at him.

Bucky glances up at Steve, taken aback. His handlers  _ never _ praised him like that. In fact, he can't remember the last time someone told him he did a good job at pretty much anything. When he finished a mission, the handlers would get out the video and audio recording from the tiny cameras on his clothing, and replay every detail of the hit with him, pointing out everything he got wrong. Firing without silencing his gun. Choosing a nest at a 20 degree angle from the target when a 25 degree angle would have guaranteed him a surer shot. Shooting a millisecond too early. Or too late. Leaving tracks in the snow. Taking his eyes off the target to eat.

Crying after making the kill.

_ Those _ are the memories Hydra let him keep -- memories of his punishments, so he could learn from them. Everything else, they obliterated, or tried to.

But here Steve is, telling Bucky that he did a nice job without even checking his work, lifting up the burners of the stove for some black mark he might have missed. Does Steve just trust that Bucky did a good job? And how could he possibly know that on Bucky's first day? Bucky knows the correct response to feedback from his client: he should say nothing in response, let nothing show on his face, mentally mark it and remember what he did and didn't do so he can replicate his success (or avoid previous failures) next time. But he's so taken aback that he can hardly keep his face from showing his surprise.

And there's a weird, warm, twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach, like a heat burning, that startles him, throws him off balance.

He needs air. Space. Needs to be away from Steve. This is all going so horribly awry. Why couldn't Steve have just punished him like he expected?

Before he can say anything, find some excuse to request dismissal or a new task in another room of the house, Steve asks him "Can you cook?"

He doesn't respond for a second, completely distracted by the heat in his face and chest. "Uh... no." He starts to add "sir", then cuts himself off. He hopes he doesn't look as uncomfortable as he feels, and tries to stand at ease. 

"Part of what I'd like you to do is cook breakfast and dinner for the both of us. It doesn't have to be haute cuisine, but you should at least know basic grains, proteins, vegetables. I have cookbooks you can work from; I'll move them to the kitchen. You can start practicing by cooking yourself lunch while you're home alone when I'm at work. For the next few nights we'll get takeout, but I hope in a week or two you'll be ready to take over." It's neither a question nor a direct order, Bucky notes, simply a directive suggestion. "Of course, if you really hate cooking, we'll figure something else out. Just let me know. I'd better get going; my team is expecting me in a meeting at the Tower. Will you be okay to stay here by yourself? The common areas are all yours. Everything but my bedroom." Steve again seems nervous, eager for confirmation that Bucky will be comfortable.

"I have what I need," Bucky says. He wishes he could match Steve's expressive, steady speech, but putting more than a few words together in a sentence is proving to be an effort. This week is the most he's spoken in seventy years. It's difficult. His head is beginning to pound from overstimulation.

"Okay." Steve smooths his hands down the fronts of his thighs. "I'll be back around six. My number should be programmed into your tablet. Text me if anything is wrong. Or if you need anything. Alright, I'm off." And he sweeps out the door.

<<>>

"I just... are you  _ sure _ he can be happy here, Nat?" Steve asks.

Natasha sighs through the phone. "Remember how skittish I was when we first met?"

Steve is leaning against the side of his car, a block or two from his home. So far, he really likes what he's seen of Bucky. He's a diligent worker, cooperative, polite. It was almost weird how thorough he was with the kitchen, but Steve isn't complaining.

But he's so expressionless. Steve wouldn't mind if Bucky had a flat affect naturally. Some people do, but Steve got the feeling Bucky couldn't relax around him, not even enough to smile. High-strung would be putting it lightly. He had been practically vibrating with tension. The look on his face when Steve told him he did a nice job in the kitchen was pure shock. It's not like Steve has never known traumatized veterans before, but he's starting to suspect Bucky is a little beyond that.

"Yeah, I remember," he tells Nat. "You practically hid in the guest room the entire first two days. I called Fury to ask how to handle it and he said to just pass you notes under the door."

"Right." Steve can hear the grimace in Nat's voice. She doesn't like to be reminded of that time. "And I turned out just fine. Just give it a try for a week, Steve. I know he's in rough shape right now, but I get a good feeling from him. ...He reminds me of myself. How I was back then."

Steve exhales slowly. "Alright. I'll give it a shot. I just want him to be comfortable." 

She snorts. "The only place I think he'd be comfortable right now is sitting on top of a building with a sniper rifle in his hands. He's got to learn to reintegrate if he's gonna work for SHIELD. He needs some time to re-learn how to be a human -- like basic social skills. And I think it'll be worth your while to give him that. I think you two are going to get along. We'll get him other support, like therapy, as soon as he's willing. And I'm here if you ever need help. You're not doing this alone."

"You've never steered me wrong in the past, I guess. Okay. I'll try it for a week."

He stays outside his car for a moment after he hangs up, staring up into the slate-grey clouds and watching a few stray, unseasonable snowflakes fall.


	4. Completely Unlike Hydra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even in the simplest details, Steve's expectations and Hydra's differ so widely that Bucky feels like he's on another planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added a chapter to the final count because this one was a beast, so I broke it into two pieces.
> 
> Content stuff: there is a brief masturbation scene and further manifestations of Bucky's trauma.

Steve taps on Bucky's door, startling him. He quickly closes his tablet before hopping off his bed to let him in.

He had been combing the internet for more information on Steve, but he didn't find much more than he figured out the night before. According to Steve's Wikipedia page, Steve is one of the five or six total serum-augmented humans on Earth -- one of five or six people who are like Bucky. (The true count depends on how many are in the Soviet Union; the number is hotly contested and could bring the total as high as twelve. Unfortunately, that's not among the information Bucky picked up from Hydra while he was theirs.)

His version of the serum and Bucky's knock-off Russian variant are not identical, but quite similar. They both have altered metabolisms, giving drugs unpredictable effects and causing them to eat more than the average human; they have improved muscle mass, augmented reflexes, heightened senses. The list goes on. Bucky already knew all that.

One of the more surprising things Bucky has discovered: Steve is nearly as old as Bucky is, but instead of being deliberately put into cryo, Steve spent most of the last century frozen into an iceberg as the result of a freak plane accident.

All in all, Steve is more like Bucky than pretty much any other human on Earth.

That's not saying much, though. They probably still don't have much in common. As far as he can tell, Steve's never been memory-wiped. And Bucky's work for Hydra, the wiping aside, has made him different from other humans. Steve isn't a machine the way Bucky is. He's _very_ human.

Bucky thinks he should probably resent that; humans are unreliable, and Bucky mostly associates them with pain. But although he's only known Steve for half a day, Bucky actually kind of likes him.

He refocuses on the present as he opens the door. Steve's home from work, and he announces that he picked up pizza on the way home. Bucky waits for orders, and Steve just stands there for a minute as if he didn't realize he'd have to give any. Finally he says, "Why don't you come to the kitchen and join me?"

Bucky's eyebrows shoot up incredulously before he can stop himself -- Steve can't seriously be suggesting eating  _ with _ Bucky? --  but he nods and follows Steve, who takes a seat on the long side of the kitchen table and starts taking his shoes off, asking Bucky to set the table and grab food and drinks.

Bucky plates three slices for Steve and gets him cold water from the fridge. He brings the food over along with utensils and the glass of water, then positions himself standing behind Steve and to his left, clasping his hands behind his back and waiting for further instructions.

Steve twists around to look at Bucky. Bucky suppresses a grimace. The whole point of this position is that his handler -- no, client -- can't easily see him; Bucky can be like a helpful ghost in the room, invisible and unobtrusive. It's where his handler would have him stand when they were being briefed for missions. It would show anyone who was looking on that he was subservient to her. He assumed that was what Steve would want as well, but he can already tell he was wrong.

"Aren't you going to eat something?"

Bucky opens his mouth, but doesn't know what to say. Even though Steve invited him down here to eat, he assumed that that was some kind of euphemism and that he would  _ actually _ eat later, in his own quarters. He closes his mouth again and nervously goes to serve himself pizza. Steve is frowning at him. He captures the moment to review later, to figure out what upset him, but for now, he gets a plate and puts food on it and walks back towards the table, which is where he runs into another problem: Where, exactly, does Steve think he's going to sit?

Steve is sitting on the long side of the table, which makes no sense because this is his house, which means he's the head of the household, which means he should be at the head of the table. If he  _ had _ sat at the head of the table, Bucky would have sat on his immediate left. In that case, Steve's right would be reserved for his second-in-command; to indicate that Bucky was more subordinate than that, he would have chosen the left-hand seat. 

But with Steve on a long end of the table, Bucky is left with three bad choices. Either short end of the table could be interpreted as the head, and Bucky sitting in one of those spots would be tantamount to insubordination. But the seat directly across from Steve also seems to indicate that Bucky is Steve's equal, since he's at a place at the table symmetric to the one Steve occupies.

This is so exhausting. Why doesn't Steve just tell Bucky what he wants? But Steve doesn't even seem to be paying attention to him, tucking into his own food, so Bucky can't turn to him for help.

Finally, completely lost, Bucky walks around Steve's chair to his left and kneels on the floor, placing his plate in his lap, and looks up at Steve for his reaction.

Steve raises his eyebrows. He puts the slice of pizza he's holding back down carefully and, with forced casualness, says, "Bucky, why don't you come sit across from me."

_ Fuck _ . 

Bucky scrambles up as quickly as he possibly can and arranges himself in the seat across from Steve. Steve is a little taller than Bucky, so at least he can look down at him, particularly if Bucky slouches. He tries to watch Steve through his lashes, waiting for him to start eating again so Bucky can eat. 

Bucky feels like he's sitting on a bed of hot coals. He's not sure what the hell Steve is thinking, but Bucky definitely is  _ not _ supposed to be sitting here like he's an equal to his employer. It's dangerous and forbidden. Maybe Steve wants an excuse to punish him. On the other hand, Steve seems to have relaxed. He starts back in on the pizza, so Bucky begins to eat as well because he has nothing left to lose at this point. For a few minutes Steve leaves Bucky alone, and he focuses on Steve's request that he eat. 

"Do you like it?" Steve asks him.

"The pizza?"

"Yeah. Is it good? This is the place I usually order from, but I can switch if you prefer something else."

"I like it." Steve smiles. Bucky shifts in his seat, wishing Steve would forgot that he's seated at the table. As an operative for Hydra, Bucky was supposed to be seen and not heard, and preferably not even seen. He never ate with his handler or her team. If he had, he's sure they would have had him kneel on the floor and eat in silence. He can't think of anything besides how wrong this whole situation is.

Seeing that Bucky doesn't want to converse, Steve spends a few minutes explaining his job to Bucky, "because I might want you to help out a little at work later on. Most of what I do is office work and diplomacy," Steve says. "I help handle international law disputes, write policy about the handful of enhanced humans living in the States, things like that. But I also go on missions for SHIELD." His eyes brighten, and he explains that SHIELD sends him to solve problems that are suited to someone with a particular skillset -- in his case, his extraordinary strength and ability to heal quickly. He lists the kind of threats he's been sent to dispatch: domestic terrorists, the occasional foreign force, guarded Hydra bases. Bucky still doesn't know how to feel about the fact that his client's job is to take down Bucky's former employer, the people who gave him his purpose in life. He supposes he should be pleased, since Hydra also destroyed the only thing he was good for by selling him off to SHIELD, who refuse to use him for his intended purpose.

"So," Steve continues, "What do you like to do in your free time?"

"I..." Bucky manages, schooling his face into a neutral expression. "That... isn't important." His handler would have slapped him for wasting breath on something as asinine as explaining his hobbies, not that he actually has any.

"What makes you say that?"

"You're my boss," he says stiffly. "And that's personal information." This is supposedly a business relationship, not that Steve seems to get that at all.

"Well." Steve pauses. "I mean, obviously you are, technically, an employee. But you're working for SHIELD. So you're not _my_ employee, for one thing. But either way, I would like to be friends with you, as well as being your... boss, if we're going to live together for a year."

Bucky pauses to digest this, gripping his thighs with his hands. "Is that an order?"

"Is what an order?"

"Being friends with you."

"No!" Steve practically shouts in surprise. Bucky flinches back, involuntarily screwing up his face, and his hands fist in the fabric of his pants as he tries to keep himself from throwing his arms up to cover his face. His handler shrieks in his head,  _ "Don't cover when I hit you! Only a coward cowers!" _ and he feels his metal fingers tear through the fabric, exposing pale moons of skin. He holds his breath, disoriented and apprehensive, and thinks this is probably the part of the night where Steve will punish him for the first time. Is this what all this confusing stuff has been leading up to? His pulse races in anticipation.

"Sorry," Steve says softly. "Damn, I didn't mean to startle you. I'll be more careful." Bucky looks up at him in alarm. Steve shouldn't be saying such a thing. Shouldn't be apologizing to Bucky. Especially not on his first fucking day on the job. Bucky needs to be stronger than this. Better than this. "I'm not going to hit you," Steve adds. He looks stricken. Maybe he's embarrassed that his employee would react this stupidly to the threat of punishment, rather than sitting still and accepting it like a professional. "Are you alright?"

Bucky nods once, sitting up straight again and trying to show with his body language that he won't flinch again. His hands are shaking violently in his lap. He grips his flesh hand with his metal one, trying to still them.

"No, of course it's not an order to be friends. This is a consensual arrangement. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Especially not anything personal. Do you understand?"

Of course he doesn't understand. It's a job. There's nothing consensual about it. "Yes."

"Okay." Steve exhales slowly, sitting back. "Okay. Let's try something else. I'll tell you about my day. And you can just listen for now. Maybe you can tell me more about yourself later, when you're more comfortable. Is that okay?"

"Yes." This is more familiar ground. Listening to a superior is easy. He just has to sit still and project the right signals and wait patiently. And Bucky is nothing if not patient.

Steve smoothly launches into a recollection of his day, naming people he works with, cities he's visited, even once a whole country that Bucky has never heard of before. Bucky tries to note down all the new names, nodding occasionally and pleased that he's back on more familiar ground.

When dinner is finished, Bucky requests permission to be dismissed and tidies the dishes they used and the rest of the kitchen. Then he goes back to his rooms, flicking on the standing lamp by the door. He undresses, inspecting the five holes in one leg of his pants and deciding they're salvageable, folding them and placing them into the dresser and making a mental note to get his hands on a needle and thread.

Then he sits heavily on the edge of his bed, naked and exhausted, looking down at his body. He's still heavily muscled despite not having trained physically in about a week, lightly furred over his chest and in a trail leading to his crotch. His hands are shaking again. They've been trembling on and off for days now, a lingering effect of the cryo wearing off. SHIELD hasn't said anything about  re-freezing him. He doesn't know if the shaking is going to get better or worse. He has never been out of cryo for this long before. Well, not during the part of his life he can remember.

He wonders what the chances are that Steve will come into this room and see him sitting here like this. He crosses back to the door. It has a simple lock. After a moment of hesitation, he locks it. Of course, Steve could get through if he wanted to. There's a safety release built into the other side of the door that can be triggered with a paperclip, and besides, a flimsy wooden door like this wouldn't stop Steve anyway, not if he is augmented like Bucky. Still, Bucky is alone, unmonitored (he swept the room for bugs while Steve was out), for the first time in... well, decades. 

He crawls into the bed and lies on his back, running a hand down his chest. Maybe it's the alone-ness that triggers it, but there's something burning under his skin, a pressure he only remembers vaguely from before Hydra, like an itch demanding to be scratched. He runs his fingers over his own skin, from his shoulders to his hips. It's a strange thing, but he's barely ever been naked in the past century, and that was mostly when Hydra was cleaning him after missions or patching his wounds; he didn't exactly have the opportunity to enjoy it. So the feeling of touching his own skin is unusual, yet intimately familiar.

The motions of touching himself come back surprisingly easily, like instinct. He reaches down and presses himself into his hand, already hard, and there's a burst of sweet sensation. At first he's too tense to let go and enjoy it, but he can hear only silence from Steve's room, and he knows his augmented hearing would let him know if Steve were coming this way. Slowly he relaxes. He comes quickly, biting off a gasp, then marvels at the slow, loose feeling that rolls over him afterwards. 

The idea that his body can give him pleasure... he had forgotten about this. It's new, and he likes it. 

He actually feels sleepy, not wired and tensely crashing into unconsciousness like he normally does at night. He's far less on-guard and tense than he has been for the past two days.

So of course that's when the flashback hits him.

As he slides further towards the precipice of sleep, the memory rushes back to him.  _ He's waiting in a parking garage, has been waiting for hours, sprawled out on concrete between two cars left here as cover for him on an upper floor. It reeks of exhaust and cigarette smoke and the faint scent of urine. His hands never leave his baby, his long and slender KSVK. This is a recent memory, from the last decade or two decades. One of his last missions before he was decommissioned.  _

_ He's already sighting down the scope, has his mark in the crosshairs, and is waiting for him to pause so he can take the shot without civilian casualties.  _

_ It's a journalist. Valentin Danilovich, who has been writing the wrong things about Yeltsin.  _

Bucky wishes he could tear his remembered self away from the scope or take his hands off the trigger. He's an American now, for fuck's sake. What does he care what some asshole has been writing about Yeltsin? _ Don't make me kill him a second time,  _ he pleads with himself.  _ I don't want to see this again. Just turn it off. _ The memory creeps forward anyway. _ Any moment he's going to make the shot. He can see the perfect window approaching, a gap in the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. _

_ Bucky exhales. _

_ And fires. _

He yelps, bolting upright, his heart pounding, as the gunshot startles him out of sleep. He gropes in the dark for his rifle, but he grasps only handfuls of the bedsheets. He quickly rips the covers off himself, concurrently elbowing the small alarm clock Steve gave him off the bedside table. It clatters to the ground, and the screen shatters. He sees the journalist's blood sprayed across his bedroom floor -- it's a memory, it  _must_ be, but it's there, dark and wet, more convincing than an illusion has any right to be.

He leaps out of bed, naked in the light of the lamp he didn't bother to turn off before falling asleep. Then, before he can get any farther, the sounds all about him start to reach him: the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the singing of crickets outside the window, wind whistling across the outside of the house. He's covered in a sheen of sweat. He braces his hands on his knees, panting gulps of air that quickly turn into stifled sobs. He runs his hands through his hair, flooded with adrenaline as though he just sprinted a mile. 

He hears Steve coming quietly down the hallway towards his room. Figures. If his hearing is augmented like Bucky's there's no way he could have slept through that.

"Bucky?" His voice is quiet.

"Everything's fine," Bucky reports. His voice wavers.

"Are you sure? Can I come in? I heard... I thought I heard something break." 

"No, everything's okay. Don't come in."

"Okay. Just let me know if you need anything."

"Alright." Steve retreats.

So the memory thing wasn't a one-off, or even a two-off. Three is a pattern, Bucky thinks, wild eyes roving around the room, re-anchoring himself in the present. It's the memory wiping wearing off. What if Hydra wasn't able to actually destroy his memories with their machine, only bury them? Or maybe it took multiple rounds in the machine to destroy a memory, so he'll slowly regain the recent ones. How long will this go on? If something like this, an immersive flashback or nightmare, happened to him during a mission, he'd be screwed. If he cried out, or lost control for even a second...

It suddenly occurs to him that this sounds a lot like PTSD the way the SHIELD psychologists described it. But that doesn't make any sense, because nothing traumatic has actually happened to him. His job with Hydra isn't what SHIELD thinks; it was simply an unusual job matching his unusual skillset. Maybe the cryofreeze and the induced amnesia actually messed with his brain, damaged it. His technicians were always careful with the antifreeze and defrosting process, but Bucky's sure that being frozen like that could do some serious damage, no matter how careful they were. Not that Hydra had had any other choice. They couldn't have Buck using up resources, not to mention aging, between missions. He understands that. 

But maybe there are side-effects to cryo that have piled up over the more than half a century during which Bucky was repeatedly frozen and un-frozen at Hydra's whim.

Maybe the cryo fucked up his brain, or maybe Bucky is just stupid and incompetent. Some of his handlers certainly thought so, and made sure he knew it. Whatever the problem is, these attacks are not good news. So far he's been able to keep them mostly private, hidden. But what if it happened in front of Steve? What if SHIELD found out? He doesn't really know what he does while he's in the  memory. Does he go blank? Make noise? He goes somewhere else, to a place and time from the past, and comes back a few minutes later with no recollection of whatever happened during that interval.

He shudders, and now he's actually crying. He tries to be quiet, so Steve doesn't wake again, but every hitch of his breath seems to echo in the room. For little while, he just lets it happen. He's not technically on a mission right now. He's off the clock, and usually he can't show emotion even then because his handler is always around, but he has no handler anymore and anyway he can't seem to stop himself. 

"Shit," he whispers to himself. If Bucky is this screwed up, with his memory looping back and forth and randomly throwing him into the past, he might not be able to succeed at this assignment. Everything is overlapping in his head, Hydra, Steve, even hints of his life before Hydra. What will he do if he can't even handle a normal civilian job? There's nobody,  _ nobody _ who would trust him as a sniper if he can't even clean a house without having a mental breakdown. What the hell is wrong with him? Why can't he keep it together?

He smears a hand through the tears and snot all over his face and holds his breath to make himself stop crying. Then he washes off his face in his en-suite and lies on his back in the bed, staring at the ceiling. He's lost all confidence that he's going to be able to keep his post and actually get his ticket back to a job sniping. But it's not like he has any other options. Even if he's clearly not competent enough for this position, he has to at least  _ try _ .

* * *

 

Steve asks him to eat with him again in the morning, in the same arrangement around the table. It's not quite as jarring when Bucky's expecting it. It also puts Bucky in a good position to sneak glances at Steve. He's dressed for work already in a dark-blue button-down and charcoal slacks, but his hair is still damp from the shower, and his face is bleary as he nurses his mug of black tea, like he's not completely awake yet. Bucky probably kept him up last night. 

"I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable last night," Steve blurts out. "It was... well, I guess I shouldn't have done that. You were okay, though, right?"

Bucky nods. Steve shouldn't be apologizing to him, but he doesn't want to argue with his boss. 

But despite his ongoing confusion about what, exactly, Steve wants from him, he feels a lot better than he did last night. He had felt ill and shaky as he tried to sleep and was up for half the night after his nightmare, pacing the perimeter of his room. He only slept for about three hours, but he at least feels steadier now. He secured every room of the house when he woke up, so he knows it's safe. That helps.

Honey-golden sunlight sets Steve's face and hair aglow as he seems to rouse himself, finishing his tea. Bucky cleans their dishes up and wipes down the counter, and Steve makes meaningless small talk about the book he's reading.

If he's a little disappointed when Steve leaves for work, he keeps it to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve asks Bucky to eat with him when he gets back from SHIELD. Bucky is surprised that Steve wants him to sit at the table instead of on the floor. He starts to worry Steve is setting him up to be punished.
> 
> Later, Bucky is alone in his room. He masturbates before falling asleep, but then has a flashback/nightmare. When he comes out of it he accidentally breaks a clock. Steve comes to his room to check if Bucky is OK, but Bucky doesn't let him in. Bucky is worried his flashbacks will make him unable to go back to working as a sniper.
> 
> The next morning, Steve apologizes for coming to Bucky's door; he's worried he invaded his privacy.


	5. Consent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi fam, thanks SO MUCH for all your lovely comments. I am reading them all and it is so heartwarming that people are actually enjoying this! I couldn't be more pleased :)
> 
> Content stuff: Bucky articulates misconceptions about consent. Nothing nonconsensual actually happens, but there are some dark thoughts expressed. It will be obvious in context but Bucky's mindset of course does NOT represent the views of the author.

Bucky spends the day learning to cook eggs. Most of the eggs he's eaten in the last seventy years were raw ones that he found in the forest while he was on long missions. He's eaten raw pigeon eggs, snake eggs, and, on one notable occasion, an owl egg (it was notable because he was then divebombed by the owl). Clearly this will not do for Steve, who seems to be a normal person who likes his food cooked, so he needs to learn to make normal-people eggs. Chicken eggs, cooked, with salt and possibly other condiments. He has no idea where to start on learning to cook, and this seems like as good a place as any.

It's strange: just a few days ago, during his interview and subsequent meetings with Romanov, Bucky assumed his job at Hydra was a pretty normal, if highly specialized, position. But the rules here in Steve's house are completely different than what they were with Hydra. For one thing, the rhythms of his life are changed. He sleeps in a bed; he showers instead of being hosed down after missions. He eats food rather than nutrient shakes. He gets to keep all his memories, which is a mixed blessing. Additionally, Steve's expectations are completely different from those of his handler. Bucky has let emotions show on his face. He has refused a direct order from Steve, when Steve asked Bucky to tell him about his likes and dislikes. He has spoken out of turn. Steve hasn't punished him once or even pointed out his failings. In fact, he seems pleased when Bucky lets his guard down around him, even though he should rationally expect an employee to be on his best behavior at all times. 

At first, Bucky thought Steve was setting him up -- Bucky had a handler who used to do that, to ask him to do things and then punish him for doing them, though the handler wasn't around for long -- but now he thinks maybe Steve's being sincere.

Either Steve is particularly lenient with his employees, or Hydra was tougher on him than he had thought. Or possibly both.

* * *

Steve comes home carrying a bag of takeout Chinese food. From the smell Bucky knows he's going to like it. He receives the food from Steve at the door to take it into the kitchen. Steve is windblown, his shirt rumpled with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

He's uncharacteristically quiet as he follows Bucky into the kitchen. Even in the last two days Bucky has picked up on Steve's propensity to chat  _ to _ Bucky even if Bucky himself doesn't initiate a conversation, but today he's not talking.

He sits down at the table with Steve and they both eat, and then Bucky says, "Permission to speak?"

"Of course. You're always allowed to speak," Steve says, pushing his plate to one side. 

"Is everything satisfactory?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're being very quiet. Did I do something wrong?"

"No, of course not. Everything looks great, Bucky, thanks. Honestly, the house hasn't been this clean in ages. It's such a relief. I usually don't have the energy to clean after work." He runs a hand over his face and shakes his head. "You've done a wonderful job." Bucky blushes. He always does that when Steve praises him. "But there is something I wanted to talk to you about, actually." 

Bucky stiffens as Steve pulls a sheaf of papers out of nowhere and places them softly on the table facing Bucky. He skims the coversheet. It's the contract he signed for this job.

This can't be anything good.

"Steve... am I..." He struggles silently for a moment. "Are you dismissing me?"

"What? You mean firing you? No! Nothing like that. You haven't done anything wrong." How does Bucky manage to say the wrong thing literally every single time he opens his mouth? "I actually just wanted to ask you about this part." He flips forward to the part of the contract that asks about the tasks Bucky's willing to do. Various housekeeping jobs. A couple of skilled trades Bucky figures he could pick up quickly enough. Some more personal items -- like bathing Steve if he were ever to be incapacitated and unable to do it himself.

And the sex stuff. He abruptly recalls that he had decided to just check "maybe" on every single item on this particular list. He didn't even read them particularly closely. He remembers there being sexual punishment, like flogging, as well as various vanilla sex acts. Maybe Steve wants him to start... servicing him this evening. Maybe Steve wants to fuck him. Well, Bucky can handle that. He is a tool, an item, and Steve can do what he wants with him. Or maybe Steve is trying to draw Bucky's attention to the punishments. Nothing on the list could really be any worse than the stuff his handler would do when Bucky made a mistake. The things she said to him, the ways she hurt him... she was endlessly creative. If Steve doesn't want sex, it's probably going to be punishment, he thinks. After all the tension of figuring out his new position, punishment might actually be a relief. He starts to try to blank his mind in preparation to take pain, though it's difficult without the induced amnesia to do most of the work for him, when he realizes Steve is still talking.

"...just thought maybe we should go over it again, since you checked maybe for everything. Like I said earlier, this position is consensual. All of the helpmeets SHIELD places have the choice of what duties to perform. Your contract lets you change this list at any time. I just want to be clear that I want the list to reflect only stuff that you actually want to do. If we were to do stuff from  _ this  _ list, I'd negotiate it with you ahead of time, of course, but I just wanted to make sure you understand that you don't  _ have _ to check yes on anything in here."

"Go over it again how?" Bucky says, having fallen several steps behind Steve's train of thought.

"I mean... I just want to make sure you've only marked things that you're  _ actually _ okay with doing. I've had... sexual relationships with some of my helpmeets. Not this early in the contract, of course. I mean, when we trust each other, in a few weeks, that could be on the table. But usually they would always have a few of these items checked off as yes and everything else as a no. So it kind of... worried me that you didn't check no for anything. If those are really your preferences, that's fine, but..."

"Did I do the form wrong?" Bucky asks, still trying to grasp what Steve wants from him. "Do you want me to change them all to yes?"

Steve's face falls and he actually pales. "Absolutely not," he says, very quietly. "Christ. No. I just said this is a consensual position."

"A consensual..."

"Do you know what that means? Consent?"

"It means... I say yes to stuff, instead of just taking orders," Bucky tries. 

"No." Steve frowns. "I mean, yes, it means you say yes, but only if you  _ want _ to. You could also refuse. Anything I ask you to do, you can refuse."

"But this is a job," Bucky says.

Steve looks at him like that has no conceivable connection with the discussion they're having.

"In a job,  _ you're  _ the one who says yes and no," Bucky prompts Steve. "What I want is for other times. When you're not my client. Or when you're not here." Bucky knew that Steve had some unusual expectations for Bucky, like friendship, but he's surprised that Steve still doesn't seem to understand that he's Bucky's  _ boss _ . He calls the shots. He should just give Bucky direct instructions of whatever Steve wants him to do and be done with it, rather than all this  _ negotiation _ . The contract isn't really important, anyway. If he and Steve would have a dispute, SHIELD would be on Steve's side no matter what, if they even bothered to get involved.

"No, that's not how this works," Steve says obstinately. "I want to know if you're  _ willing _ to do these things for me. If you  _ want _ to. The way this job works is that we work together to find an agreement that makes  _ both _ of us happy. What you want does matter. The helpmeets I worked with before, who checked yes on these boxes, they knew and liked that type of work. Most of them had done it before. But a lot of people aren't comfortable with that stuff, which is fine. It's important that you know you can communicate this stuff to me. That's why I brought it up." He goes back to the list. "Look. Here's what I'm going to do." He takes the pen and starts going down the list. "Here are all the things I'm never going to want you to do. You don't have to worry about these." And he goes and starts putting big Xes in the 'no' boxes for flogging, anal sex, electricity, basically anything that could reasonably cause Bucky pain. Then he hands the form back to Bucky and gives him the pen. "Now you do the rest. Or leave them, if that's what you _really_  want."

When Bucky just holds it and looks at Steve, he says, "This is supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship. I just want to be totally sure this doesn't go anywhere you don't want it to go. But Bucky... if you can't tell me yes or no to these things, I can't trust that you're okay with anything else we do, either. I can't trust you to make your boundaries clear. And the last thing I want to do is make you feel violated or upset because you haven't communicated something to me. You don't have to do any of the things on this list, but if you can't trust me enough to tell me what you want and don't want, this... this isn't going to work out." He looks apologetic, but Bucky can read the threat between the lines.

Bucky grips the pen so hard in his flesh hand his fingers go white. He takes a deep breath. Slowly, he checks "yes" on blowjobs and handjobs. There are only a few boxes left that Steve hasn't eliminated. Dirty talk, giving and receiving. Praise, giving and receiving. Kissing.

Stalling, he checks yes on both praise boxes and kissing. Neither of those things could possibly be  _ that _ unpleasant, not that would know. Then he takes a deep breath and, watching Steve, hovers over "no" on dirty talk, giving. 

He knows it would probably be safer to just check yes on all the remaining boxes. But here's the thing. Bucky has never been trained to speak. In fact he has been trained by Hydra to speak as little as possible except when he's giving mission reports. And that training was reinforced heavily with discipline. Bucky isn't a coward. He takes discipline well. He learns from it. He learns fast. He has learned to be quiet.

It pains him even to make what he supposes is regular conversation with Steve. If Steve ever asks him to talk dirty, he might as well just quit on the spot. It isn't going to happen.

"Bucky, if you don't want to do it, say no."

He checks no.

If this is some kind of trap, if Steve was planning to fire Bucky if he checked no on any of these things, he at least doesn't seem like he's going to do it  _ right now _ . In for a penny, in for a pound. He checks the "no" box on receiving. And then he's done. They have re-done the list and finished it and hopefully they will never talk about it again and Steve will just take what he wants from Bucky from now on regardless of all his pretty talk about consent.

He lays the pen aside and stares straight ahead at the opposite wall, bracing himself for whatever Steve might do to him next. He grips his thighs, trying to still his shaking hands. His breath is coming in short gasps, and he doesn't know why. He tries to tell himself that he's done the best he could. If Steve punishes him he needs to accept it. Tension and fear won't help.

For a second, Steve is out of Bucky's field of vision, hidden behind a lock of hair that falls over Bucky's face, and he doesn't know if he'll look up to find Steve sitting at the table or his handler when he pushes it back.

Steve's voice comes from a long way off. "You're shaking. Shit. Are you okay?"

"Permission to be dismissed," Bucky requests in a monotone.

"Um... if... if you have to, you can be dismissed. But I don't... I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed you to talk about that stuff. I know it's personal, and I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I just want you to know you can trust me. I want to learn to communicate with each other. I keep messing this up." Steve sighs. "Please, stay. I won't make you do anything else. Just stay and keep me company."

Bucky faces him, still as tense as a coiled spring. "Okay."

"Let's watch a movie together. How does that sound?"

"Good," Bucky says automatically, injecting brightness into his voice. The worst seems to be over. His panic is passing, and though Steve seems more uncomfortable than ever, he doesn't seem to be about to fire Bucky.

He brings Bucky to the sitting area, then asks him to wait while Steve changes clothes. The direct orders calm Bucky, giving him firm ground to stand on. Steve leaves to go change out of his work clothes and Bucky takes a small pleasure in sitting still obediently while he is gone. He returns in flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt, pulls up Netflix on the TV, and selects some show Bucky has never heard of that claims to be a comedy, sitting on the love seat. 

"Do you want to sit with me, or..."

"I'll sit on the floor," Bucky offers quickly before Steve can ask him to be on the love seat. If Steve won't give him his usual position of subordination, won't give him the comfort of taking orders, maybe he'll just have to  _ take _ it.

"Okay. If you're more comfortable like that."

Bucky takes a position in front of Steve and to his left, kneeling with his back brushing up against the couch cushions. 

Fifteen minutes into the show, which Bucky is not really watching, Steve lets his hand brush the back of Bucky's head. Bucky starts, and Steve asks him if the touch is alright, and Bucky says it is.

"Are you sure?" Steve's fingers trail down the back of his head, and Bucky shivers. "I could rub your shoulders. You seem really tense."

"Please," Bucky finds himself saying in a moment of weakness, because he's afraid and doesn't know what's coming next, and the small pleasure of Steve's gentle touch is at least _some_ consolation. Being touched like this is like nothing Bucky's ever felt before, or at least nothing he can remember feeling. Steve moves his hands down to cup Bucky's shoulders and starts to dig his strong fingers into the tight muscles, rubbing the back of his neck with his thumbs, and Bucky actually sighs in pleasure. His handlers touched him sometimes, maneuvering him into and out of cryo and to administer discipline, but their touch was clinical. Steve's is warm; it lights up his skin. He's hypersensitive, experiencing each movement as a rush of sensation and feeling. His fear that Steve could easily strike him in the back of the neck or head without Bucky seeing it coming wars with how damn  _ good _ it feels, and pleasure wins. 

If he pays for relaxing into Steve's touch with punishment later, maybe that's worth it as long as he can enjoy it now.

He doesn't say anything more to Steve, but drops his head forward to give Steve better access, giving up all pretense of watching the movie.

Steve rubs his shoulders until he thinks he's going to melt, then moves up to stroke Bucky's hair. Bucky's breathing slows; his head lolls back and his shoulders relaxed. He's hugging his arms tightly into his torso and pressing his fists into his legs, in part to suppress the distracting shaking of his hands, but when he slowly releases his fists, he's surprised to find his hands barely trembling. He's sleepy, the movie spooling out in front of him, and his back is resting against the couch ever so slightly...

He's not sure how it happens -- he only slept for a few hours last night and he's been working all day, but Bucky is sure he's stayed awake much longer than this on less sleep without a problem on missions. Nevertheless, he somehow falls asleep sitting at the foot of the couch.

He wakes to Steve's voice saying his name softly, like a question. He opens his eyes and reaches for the sheath where he used to keep his hunting knife, by his left ankle, but it's not there -- neither the sheath nor the knife. For a second he thinks someone has disarmed him, but then he sees the credits rolling in front of him and remembers where he is. "Did you fall asleep?" Steve is asking him.

"No," he lies.

"Oh. I thought... well, it's pretty late now, anyway. Are you tired?"

He shrugs. "Do you have orders for me?"

"No, you're finished with what I wanted for today. I'm heading to bed." He flicks off the TV. "But you can stay up if you want."

"Okay." He feels blunted, still off-balance from the nap, as he gets up and goes to his room. He knows he should analyze whatever bizarre  _ thing _ just happened with Steve on the couch, and figure out why Steve would want to rub his shoulders and sit with him for an hour under the pretense of watching a movie, but he's so exhausted and confused he'd rather just go with whatever Steve seems to want for now, just trust him, and try to figure out the system later, and that's about as far as he gets before he's asleep again, this time in his own bed.

* * *

"Steve. I assume this isn't a social call," Natasha says brusquely, straight to business as always.

"Hi Nat. Good to hear from you, too," he says sarcastically. "How's your week going?"

"I think I'm about to find out," she deadpans.

"Fine, have it your way." Again, he's calling her between his home and work, this time from a little park where he can watch swans circulate on a pond as he talks with her. It's the early morning; the pond is blanketed in mist. The laughter leaves his voice as he adds, "I'm worried about him."   
  
"About Bucky, I assume? Do tell."

"I mean, it's actually going well. He's really helpful around the house. He's clean, and I'm pretty sure he feeds himself while I'm not around. He's polite, almost to a fault. I like him. He's quiet, but he seems really intelligent."

"I told you you'd like him. But...?"

"Nat... I can barely even communicate with him. It's like he's from another planet. The other day I asked him what he likes to do in his free time and said I hoped we could be friends, and he asked me if I was  _ ordering  _ him to be friends with me. Then -- did you see his contract after he filled out all the forms?"

"I saw it."

"So you saw the part about sex work. He filled in maybe for literally everything."

"Yeah, I thought that was a bit odd."

"So did I. I thought it would be best if I asked him about it, and cleared up any misconceptions he had about his job as soon as possible. I just wanted him to know he can be honest with me... I wanted him to know he can assert himself in his position, even though he sees himself as my subordinate."

"And?"

"I... I had to explain to him what consent was. He thinks that because I'm his boss I can just tell him anything and he'll do it. It's not just that he won't tell me what he wants. It's like he doesn't even know what he wants. Or he doesn't understand why that might  _ possibly _ be important." He sighs deeply. Natasha starts to say something, but Steve continues over her: "I think I totally freaked him out by bringing it up, though. He seemed really upset so I asked him to watch a movie with me to show him I wasn't going to do anything bad to him, and then somehow I ended up rubbing his back..."

"He let you touch his  _ back _ ?" For some reason this is the first thing about this story that seems to actually surprise Natasha.

"Yeah, I don't know, it was stupid, but he just looked so tense... and then when I started touching him he was leaning into it like a cat, and I didn't know what to do so I just kept going, and I think he fell asleep and I haven't seen him since then."

"It sounds like everything's going as well as could be hoped for to me."

"As well as could be hoped for?! Nat! He... he..." Steve gives up with a groan.

"I told you about his background," Natasha says. "Did you really think this was going to be easy? He's gonna need a long adjustment period. I told you that  _ before _ you agreed to have him. If you weren't ready for that, you shouldn't have signed the contract."

"No, I know that. Fuck. You know how it was with Joel, Nat. This isn't my first rodeo." Joel was Steve's last helpmeet, a military veteran with PTSD. After his contract with Steve finished, Joel left SHIELD to pursue an engineering degree, but Steve still emails with him and thinks of him often and fondly. But the first few weeks with him were... difficult. Not to mention his first few weeks with Natasha, but he doesn't bring that up. "But Bucky... I mean... the psychologists said he was basically alright. PTSD, anxiety, but nothing totally out of the ordinary besides some suspected amnesia from brainwashing. They cleared him for this job. But he's obviously struggling. It's hard to watch. I just don't know if he's ready for this."

"Do you want me to pull him out?"

"I don't know. I don't want you to, but maybe I'm just being selfish. He hasn't had any personal autonomy since when  _ I  _ was a kid, not according to his records. Why would you throw him directly into another situation where someone's in charge of him?"

"That's exactly why we placed him with you. He's comfortable taking orders. If we put him directly back into civilian life and gave him his own apartment, what exactly do you think would happen? Think about it for a moment."

Steve does, and finds he actually can't imagine what Bucky would even do in a completely unstructured environment. Probably whatever Hydra had him doing, which... "Okay. Point taken. I don't think he'd know what to do with himself. But even so... maybe I'm not the best client for him. I think he thinks I don't  _ like _ him. I keep saying the wrong thing, upsetting him..."

"Steve, have you  _ ever _ yelled at him on purpose? Tried to actually chastise him?"

"No, but --"

"It's inevitable that there are going to be some misunderstandings. When he did something wrong with Hydra, they'd practically torture him to teach him not to do it again. That's what he's expecting from you. It's not your fault; it's because of what they did to him. All you can do is show him you're not going to hurt him and try to gain his trust to give him the confidence to make some more of his own decisions and to find his own way again. Steve, I matched you with him because I  _ knew _ you would have the patience for that. Because you did it for me. You're obviously already earning his trust if he's not only letting you touch him, but letting you touch him from behind. Hydra practically sold him off to us yesterday and he's already come this far. He needs time and space to figure himself out, and I know you can give him that. Just take a deep breath. You've got this."

"Yeah, okay. Thanks for the pep talk."

"Of course." Natasha always knows just what to say to talk him down. "Any time. Have you talked to him about getting a psychologist yet?"

"Not yet."

"Alright, how about I try to talk him into it the next time I get a chance? He and I have some things in common. I think I might be able to convince him."

"Yes. That would help. Please. Natasha, thanks."

"No problem, big guy."

"Okay." He sighs. "I have to get to work. I owe you one, Nat. If you ever need anything..."

"Got it. I'll talk to you later."


	6. The Two Buckys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finishing up my last year of college, so life got in the way a bit this week, but I'm finally back with some new content (tm).
> 
> Also, overall chapter count has increased because a few really long chapters have been broken up. I didn't actually wordcount my chapters when I was dividing them up, so there's probably going to be more shuffling around in the future -__- sorry!
> 
> Thanks for all your FANTASTIC comments :)
> 
> Content stuff for this section: there's some self-harm-related content and suicidal ideation.

They slowly fall into a comfortable routine over the next week. Bucky makes breakfast for Steve now that he can cook eggs, and puts coffee on so it's ready when Steve comes out of the shower. Once Steve leaves for work, he practices cooking, finishes whatever chores Steve set out for him, and plays with his tablet and paces around the perimeter of the house. The first day Steve is gone, he also takes three knives from the kitchen. He's long since realized Steve doesn't have a single clue how to cook. He won't miss them as long as Bucky leaves a paring knife for opening packages. He tucks them away in his room. He carries them sometimes, when Steve isn't home, but tries to leave them hidden when he returns. 

When Steve gets home, they eat together, and Steve sometimes requests his company to watch a movie, or play a board game (so far they've found out that Bucky is terrible at Scrabble, because cryo apparently wrecked his ability to spell, but matches Steve in chess). Occasionally Steve has him do something tangentially SHIELD-related, like collating a big stack of loose papers and notes into an organized binder, or helping find and print forms Steve needs for his work. 

Steve continues to touch him, casually and playfully, on occasion -- shoving his shoulder when he wins at chess, or placing a hand on his upper back while he's cleaning and asking if Steve can help with anything. Bucky gets used to it, kinda.

He eventually works his way up to making acceptable farfalle from scratch, mixing pasta dough at noon to be ready by the time Steve gets home. He puts it together with a light vinaigrette, sliced asparagus, marinated and fried tofu (Steve is vegetarian), and a salad on Friday evening. He plates it as artfully as he can and snaps to attention by the counter as he hears Steve at the door just in time.

Steve seems to spend an eternity taking his shoes off and fussing with his jacket before he makes his way into the kitchen, where he catches sight of the table, and pauses in surprise.

"Wow," he says after a second. "This looks phenomenal. I thought you said you couldn't cook!"

"I learned."

"I'll say. Did you make the pasta by hand?" Steve leans over one of the plates, inhales, and hums happily. "You didn't have to do all this."

"But you asked me to learn to cook..."

"Yes, of course, but I didn't expect you to become a professional chef in a week, Bucky. You're amazing. This is beautiful. I'm very happy." 

"Oh." He smiles very intentionally. It feels forced, but Steve smiles back.

He changes into his house clothes and Bucky sits with him at the table, another part of the routine to which he's slowly growing accustomed. He tried sitting on the floor a few more times after Steve first asked him to sit with him, but Steve stubbornly refuses to let him.

Steve hums again when he tastes the food. "Buck, this is incredible." He won't stop praising every aspect of the meal, and Bucky is blushing. 

He's starting to like it when Steve praises him, to trust Steve when Steve tells him that he's good.

They both eat a ridiculous amount of pasta. Steve keeps up a steady patter of conversation, and Bucky is bold enough to contribute a few times, asking about names Steve has said before: Tony, who, he finds out, is indeed Tony Stark, with whom Steve apparently works; Clint, who Steve says is Natasha's boyfriend. Steve smiles when Bucky talks. Bucky is still getting used to that, trying to train himself to be more expressive because Steve clearly appreciates it.

Steve offers to do the dishes after dinner, but Bucky refuses. It's his job. Steve eventually relents and lets Bucky do them, telling Bucky that when he's finished he's dismissed for the night and can do as he pleases and then announces that he's going to practice piano in the office and that Bucky can come get him if he needs him.

Bucky finishes up the last few dishes, and as he places the last one in the dish rack, he hears the first chord come floating in from the other room.

Steve touches a couple of keys, rolls several major arpeggios, then starts to run up and down the keyboard in quick, even scales. He moves around the wheel of fifths, playing all the sharp and flat major scales as Bucky stands over the sink, hardly breathing, his wet hands dripping.

The music sets something burning inside of him.

Steve finishes the wheel of fifths and starts on scales offset by thirds to make a simple countermelody. Bucky stares at the window above the kitchen sink, unseeing.

When did he last hear music, even the simple beauty of a scale played in thirds? He knows Steve listens to classical on headphones sometimes when he comes home from work, but Bucky has never tried to find music on his tablet. The hair on the back of his neck stirs, sending a shiver down him. He's frozen in place, his eyes starting to well up with tears.

Something human, something  _ feeling _ , something that can actually experience  _ pain _ is breaking open inside him, cracking painfully.

Then Steve starts to actually play, and Bucky doesn't think he'll be able to stand it. He starts a dramatic Chopin Polonaise and runs through it easily, the music shifting and changing with emotion as Steve draws it out. Then he moves on to a piece Bucky doesn't recognize, something Steve himself is learning. He plays it haltingly with no finesse, repeating sections and hitting wrong notes, but Bucky is transfixed, the music running over him, drowning him in an unstoppable river.

Half-consciously, he sets down the plate he was rinsing and drifts down the hallway until he's standing right outside the living room. Steve is just out of sight behind the doorway, and the melody reaches Bucky clearly. He sinks down to the floor, his whole body trembling as song after song washes over him, songs Steve plays easily with movement and emotion, songs Steve barely knows that he painfully strikes out key by key, one-handed melodies that leap about the keyboard. And Bucky is crying, unable to put a name to the pain he feels inside of him.

He remembers. He remembers sitting next to someone he knew well on a piano bench, before a janky old Yamaha upright, in a room that could be a classroom, maybe, or a practice room at a music school. And they are playing a duet, something classical; he can remember the tune of it, overlaying and twining into the melody Steve is playing; the composer and title just out of reach. It was a playful song, simple but with great energy. In his memory he and his companion race through it, each leaping through their part effortlessly, touching at the shoulder, their hands crossing and rehearsing, vying for space at the middle of the keyboard, and laughing, laughing as they play. Who was she?

Who was  _ he _ , back then?

There is another Bucky, the one he's remembering, a Bucky that was more than a mindless assassin, a drone made from parts of a human to create an almost-human machine built to follow orders. That person is still a part of him: Bucky that has memories, that  _ feels _ , that is in so much pain he can barely breathe. A part of him that is struggling to continue living, to find a new way to go on now that Hydra has been taken from him, now that he has been delivered from Hydra.

How can he stand it? How can he go on living when something so beautiful can render him a silent, shivering mess? How can he reconcile the emotionless soldier Hydra taught him to be with this new, terrifying thing flowering agonizingly inside him?

He stands unsteadily, covering his face, wondering and ashamed, and wipes streams of tears uselessly into his shirt. He escapes to his room and slams the door. His chest is heaving and he collapses onto his bed.

Steve keeps playing like it's nothing, like he's heard beauty this intense every day of his life. It's muffled now. He covers his ears with his hands and it's nearly gone.

He's disgusting, covere in tears and snot. He goes into his ensuite, hissing through his teeth to drown out the sound, and splashes cold water across his face. When he comes out, it sounds like Steve is playing more quietly, maybe using the una corda pedal. He probably thinks the noise was bothering Bucky. Somehow the softness of the sound makes it even more painful, hinting at a childhood Bucky doesn't even remember enough to be nostalgic about.

He drops into bed, hoping that sleep will come soon, but he knows that it won't.

* * *

 

 

Bucky feels like shit in the morning when he comes downstairs, far worse than he's felt since he moved in with Steve. He hasn't slept for more than a few hours a night since the beginning of the week, and last night was probably his worse yet. He only managed to drop off for about an hour all told, haunted by his few, vague memories of the person he was before Hydra.

He doesn't know who he is anymore. Is he supposed to be the sensitive, emotional person who existed before Hydra broke him down? Or is it better for him to cling to the efficient, robotic shell Hydra created? There's no way for the two to coexist, no way for him to reconcile who he is now with who he once was.

Nearer the morning, he had another flashback to shooting a spy, one of his few botched hits. His first shot was sloppy. The spy had been drunk, weaving unpredictably as she crossed the street where he was supposed to shoot her. To make matters worse, the weather wasn't cooperating: it was cold, below freezing, and thunderstorming, pouring down rain that soaked his hands and threatened his grip on his rifle. He shifted uncomfortably, the cold rain running over his scalp in rivulets and going uncomfortably warm in his armpits and where he was lying on the top of the building. 

She was heading to a rendezvous point where she was to exit by unmanned helicopter, so he wasn't going to get a better chance to shoot her. He had readjusted his rifle about a thousand times as she zigzagged unpredictably down the road. He was pretty sure she wasn't faking it, either; she had supposedly been sent to seduce a diplomat, so likely the drunkness was real. Finally, once he realized he wasn't going to get a better opportunity, he took the shot just as she stumbled and listed to one side. The shell went wide; he hit her in the shoulderblade, incapacitating her without killing her.

The mission was doomed the second he pulled the trigger. She started screaming and wailing at the top of her lungs, blood spraying everywhere and mixing with the dark rain on the pavement. In the few seconds it took him to reload his rifle (something he rarely had to do, as he was known for making the kill in one shot) and kill her, the entire street had awakened and police had already begun to race towards the scene.

His handler had been furious that he had left a mess.

Half of him hates himself for killing the spy. That half of him feels a deep empathy for his victim, and wonders what her future would have been like if Bucky hadn't robbed her of it. That half of him imagines her family receiving the news, weeping, their lives divided into before and after her death. He wonders if she had a spouse, or a partner, waiting at home for her, waiting for the sound of her keys in the lock that would never come. He wonders what she felt a second before her death. If there's any way Bucky can ever atone for that pain.

The other half of him swears that if Bucky goes soft -- if he starts to feel this way about every hit -- his career is over. And without his career he's worse than useless. He's a waste.

He silently makes breakfast for Steve, takes his instructions for the day, and retreats to his room, where he lies on his back on his bed.

This is why Hydra kept him an amnesiac. He can't reconcile these two sides of himself, these two Buckys. He  _ needs _ to be wiped again. To be put back into cryo and to awaken from a long, dark sleep with no recollections, just a pure, blank mind and clear instructions from his superiors. He needs it so badly, worse than he has since Hydra sold him. He wants to go back to being a thoughtless pawn, moved around the chessboard by his handler in neat patterns.

He goes to his bathroom and takes out one of the kitchen knives he borrowed from Steve. 

He's honed them all to a fine edge on the knife sharpener Steve keeps in the kitchen. Now he rests the blade of the paring knife on his thumbnail, testing it. It bites in effortlessly, just a hair, and he carefully withdraws it.

He remembers the rush of clarity that would come right after he was injured on a hit. The handful of times he was shot or knifed or broke a bone, the world would crystallize around him in minute detail for a few seconds after the pain, seeming to slow and clarify as his mind whited out. Was it like the blankness he feels from having his memories wiped? Bucky isn't sure, but maybe he can find out.

Also, he knows that if he were dead there wouldn't be the two Buckys struggling. Not that he wants to die, but maybe he wants to flirt with the idea a little.

Steve has left for work already, and Bucky is alone. The bathroom is tile. He knows where to find bleach to clean up the mess. He finds alcohol in a first aid kit and sanitizes the knife. He holds it, looking at it for a while. He hasn't done this before, isn't sure where to start or what exactly he wants. He starts to push his jeans down so he can try one of his thighs, where Steve won't see.

The phone rings in his room.

His head snaps up. He catches sight of himself in the mirror, the dark circles under his eyes and his hair hanging lank around his face, as he sets the blade gently down on the edge of the sink in a daze. He walks out to the Stark tablet, which is ringing and buzzing concurrently, showing Romanov's face. The sound irritates him. Bucky picks up and puts it on speaker without saying anything, jerking his pants back up.

"Hello, Bucky," Romanov's voice says. When he doesn't answer, she adds, "I'm calling to check on you and make sure you're doing okay. Maybe set up a meeting."

"I'm... functional," he says. His voice is always gravelly, but it sounds rougher than usual. He clears his throat self-consciously.

"What's wrong?'

"I need to be wiped," he says. The idea has occurred to him that perhaps Romanov can hook him up. "Can SHIELD do it?"

"You mean cryo?"

"Not cryo. Amnesia. Hydra could wipe my memories with a big machine. Otherwise, it..." He trails off.

"What happens otherwise?"

"It gets bad," he says in a whisper.

"What gets bad?"

"I'm supposed to be a machine. No memories, no emotions. Just the task. I'm a tool. An object, for Hydra to use. Or Steve. Whatever my handler says I do. But I can't anymore... I can't just do anything and not think about it. I have all these thoughts, these feelings about what I've done... I can't control it. I keep remembering things. I need to be blank again... I don't know how to do it without the machine."

"Are you going to hurt yourself?" Romanov sounds deadly serious. Bucky thinks he's going to start crying again. How does she always see right through him to whatever he's doing wrong? 

"No. I don't know." His voice shakes. "I..."

"Stay where you are. I'm going to come get you. Hang tight, just stay on the line."

"You don't need to do that. I'm fine. Just get someone who can wipe me. Just once. I just need to forget..."

"That's not happening, Barnes. I'll be there in five minutes. Keep talking to me."

He seriously considers hanging up, but everything he knows about Romanov suggests that she'll just make whatever she's planning ten times worse if he doesn't cooperate, so he doesn't. He manages intermittent muttering in response to whatever she says at him through the phone over the next five minutes until she hangs up. Seconds later there's a knock at the door. Swept along by the inexorable tide of his own incompetence, he lets her into Steve's apartment.

"You have to be out of here by seventeen hundred," he says right away.

"Is that when Steve gets home? No problem; I'll be gone by then. But actually, I was planning on taking  _ you _ out of here." She jerks her thumb at the sleek, nondescript navy car parked in Steve's driveway. "But first, give me your knives." When he doesn't move, she rolls her eyes. "Listen, this is  _ not _ my first rodeo. I can see you have at least one tucked into your waistband. And you're not stupid; you have a backup."

He withdraws the knife from his waistband, then retrieves the one braced against his leg by rubber bands. When Romanov doesn't move, he sighs and un-tapes a double-edged razorblade he stole from Steve's shaving kit from the inside of his sleeve. The original paring knife is still in the bathroom upstairs.

"You're allowed to be armed," Romanov says, "generally, but just... not right now."

She bundles Bucky out the door above his weak protests, instructing him to put on shoes and a jacket (winter is coming on quickly). She leads him to the car, at first glance nondescript. Inside, the dashboard is covered in LCD screens and Bucky can see at least eight buttons that aren't on normal cars, including an intriguing "stealth mode". It growls when she clicks the button to start it. 

She doesn't talk much in the car except to say that she's taking him to a coffeehouse and to comment that he probably doesn't get out much (which is true, although he has gone out to buy groceries once or twice). They get out in a nondescript shopping center and she leads him into the coffee place, mostly empty except for a few students pecking away at their laptops. It's decorated in dark wood, dimly lit by a myriad of lamps that cast intersecting pools of warm light. One of them, in a back corner, is shaped like an owl with alert, glowing eyes. Bucky stares at it for a minute as Romanov greets the barista by name. She orders mint tea for each of them. They take a table in the corner, and Romanov politely allows him to take the secure corner seat with walls at his back.

"First off," she starts, "We won't be wiping your memories."

"You have to."

"Unfortunately for you, we  _ don't _ have to. SHIELD is all about personal autonomy for our employees, but that doesn't extend to assisting you in dangerous experimental brain therapies."

"You don't understand. I've never... remembered before. I didn't realize it was going to be this bad. I can't live like this. I want to go back to being a machine. I'm more useful that way, anyway."

"You  _ did _ live like this, once, before you were captured by Hydra. Isn't that right?"

"That wasn't me."

"Come on, Barnes. Even if you don't remember it firsthand, you must have read your own file by now. You saved up some money, joined the army, worked your way up through the ranks. Your soldiers respected you, you were decorated..."

"Don't talk about that," he snaps, loudly enough that the barista looks over in alarm before Romanov waves him off. "I don't remember any of that," Bucky says. "I'm different now. Hydra changed me. I used to be a, a, a human, but I'm not anymore. I'm a  _ tool _ . I've been wiped for decades. It's part of who I am now. The cryo and the electroshock, the wiping... you build up a tolerance for it over time, until you depend on it to keep you steady and to keep you sane. When I don't have it for a while, everything moves too fast, flooding me, and I start to have these thoughts and feelings..." He's agitated, gripping the edge of the table, his tea untouched before him. "You don't know what it's like. You have to help me." He's hardly said this much to anyone in one go since he came out of cryo the last time, but he's desperate. Romanov  _ needs _ to understand him. Needs to agree. 

"No offense, Barnes, but you don't know anything about me and what I do and don't know," she says, glancing up from her tea to meet his eyes. She watches him carefully as she places her hand gently atop his. Her touch is warm and dry. "There are ways for you to live with yourself and to process what happened to you without obliterating those memories. At SHIELD, there are doctors --"

"The Hydra doctors gave me amnesia. They knew what I needed. They knew I was bad without it. I don't need to see a doctor. I need the machine."

"Are you afraid --"

"I'm not afraid of anything!" Bucky shouts. He's totally losing it, and it feels really good to let it out even though he's already starting to regret it. Practically everyone in the coffee shop is looking at them nervously.  _ Good, let them look, _ he thinks maliciously.  _ They should be scared _ . "People keep telling me that I'm afraid, I'm messed up, I'm broken, but I'm not! I just need this one thing! You're just too obtuse to help me help Steve!" Overwhelmed with fury, he makes what is probably his first good decision of the day and stands up, his chair clattering backwards, to stalk out of the coffee shop at a pace just short of a run. He feels like he's about to boil over. If Romanov won't help him, probably nobody else at SHIELD will either, and they're the only people who have the technology to take these memories from him and make him calm again. This is all fucking pointless, hopeless. He shouldn't have let her take his knives...

The world jitters around him, his vision jerking up and down, and as soon as he gets outside and the cold wind slaps him he realizes that his head is throbbing fiercely, jolting with his steps and his heartbeat. A belated headrush hits him as he stumbles away from the doors and for a moment he can't see anything at all. Everything is searingly loud and incoherent. It's like the horrible comedown after he completes a hit when the adrenaline rush leaves him and he completely crashes, barely lucid enough to drag himself back to his extraction point and get out of the hit alive. He feels sick. Something is terribly wrong with him. 

He braces himself against the brick exterior wall of the building, leaning against it as he staggers around towards the back of the building via the alley to which it is adjacent. Rain begins to spit down spasmodically, confusing everything further. A second ago he was fine, but now it feels like something is wrong with his heart; it's racing so fast he can't count the beats. Metallic fear knifes through him. Is he dying?

"Barnes, where are you going?" Romanov asks, her voice thin and high over the wind.

He turns to glare at her. "If you're not gonna give me the mind wipe, get away from me. I'm not good for anything without it. I can't... I can't do this..." His hands are shaking violently. Not just his hands; his legs are trembling too, and he can hardly hold himself upright. And in fact as he notices this something much scarier begins to happen: He can feel his windpipe closing down, his airway narrowing as his breathing becomes more labored and louder in his ears. He gasps in a startled breath and finds that between one breath and the next he has lost his ability to inhale. He sucks in with a loud wheeze, audible under the now-constant rain. He doesn't know what's happening to him, only knows that Romanov can't see him like this. He sucks in another breath laboriously, his ribs and chest straining, and he's beginning to grow lightheaded as he staggers backwards away from her. 

His vision is whiting out and soon he can hardly see at all, and the roaring in his ears, which started a minute ago, has kicked up to a deafening volume, so he can't even hear the wind, can feel the rain lashing his back but can't hear it. He's somewhere grey, surrounded by fog; the sharp ringing goes on and on, like the distinctive sound he would hear just before passing out when Hydra would anesthetize him before cryo. He claws at the collar of his shirt, belatedly thinking to loosen it as he fights for breath. He's actually about to fucking die right here in this alley. He's going to die miserable and hopeless like he lived. He's going to --

A hand brushes his shoulder and he lashes out, shoving whoever it is away; the person spins expertly with his force and grab both his shoulders firmly. "Bucky. Bucky. Listen to me. You're going to be fine, but you  _ have _ to breathe. I'm going to count, and on three, I want you to take a deep breath in." He tries to choke out  _ I can't _ , but of course he can't speak because he can't breathe and he's dying and... "One, two, three... There you go. Now out."

To his surprise, a little air has gotten through to his lungs. He opens his eyes and Romanov is sitting in front of him. "Just breathe with me. Don't try to talk."

"You poisoned me," he gets out as the constriction of his throat starts to loosen.

"No, that was a panic attack," Romanov says. She's crouched in front of him, looking into his eyes in a way that suggests she's checking his pupils. 

"I don't have panic attacks."

"Apparently you do." She lets go of him and backs up a little as his trembling breath continues to even out. He's weak and exhausted, even more tired than he already was this morning. He's not sure if he can even stand. "If I had poisoned you, you wouldn't have gotten over it in five minutes. I was an assassin once, too."

"I'm augmented," he gasps. "I've had the serum. You didn't realize --"

"I already told you, I read your file. I would have taken it into account with the dosage and my choice of poison," she counters easily. "Actually, I would have taken it into account by choosing a better way to kill you that's not so dependent on the traits of your bizarre metabolism. Trust me, Barnes, I know it's a cliché, but seriously, if I had wanted you dead or incapacitated, you would be."

He processes this for a minute. "Am I fired?" he finally asks.

"No. You're not getting out of this  _ that _ easily. This might surprise you, but this actually is not the first time I've coached a fresh-out helpmeet through their first panic attack."

"You should fire me."

"This isn't a fireable offense. It's actually pretty normal among your demographic."

"I don't have a demographic."

"Now you're just being contrary," she says. "Listen. You're okay now. Your dignity is still intact. You didn't even pass out or piss yourself,  _ or _ hurt any innocent bystanders. All things I've seen before, by the way. This whole situation could be quite a bit worse, so don't exacerbate it by being a pessimist." Her matter-of-fact attitude just makes Bucky hate himself more. It's like this is exactly what she expected of him, to find him quivering in the grimy alley by the coffee shop, unable to move or think or breathe. Even if she's not going to fire him right now, he's humiliated. He never wants to see her again. What the fuck kind of adult human makes a scene in public like that? He's clearly incompetent and there's no way he can be more of a help than a liability to Steve like this. If she's not going to wipe his memories so he can actually be useful, he needs to find some other job that doesn't require mental stability. That doesn't require him to think or make decisions. Or do anything precise with his hands, he adds, looking down at them. He could probably get a job at the docks; he worked in a shipyard once when he was --

"Bucky. Hey. Bucky." Romanov rolls her eyes. "Focus, okay? You can quit if you  _ really _ want. Your contract with Steve is at-will. But I don't think you really want to do that. I'm guessing you like what you've seen of Steve so far. He's a frustratingly likable guy." She smiles a tiny smile.

When he thinks about it a little, Bucky supposes he doesn't actually want to quit. What he wants is to perform really, really well at his job. If he has to be a helpmeet he wants to be the best damn helpmeet the world has ever seen. He's blundering around in the dark trying to figure out how to do that, but it's not like quitting will help at all. He supposes he could ask Romanov to transfer him to a different client; maybe Steve is uniquely difficult to work with. But he doesn't want to be set back by a week, particularly not considering how hard he worked to keep it together all week, and he's not ready to give up on living with Steve yet. He really wants to stay in his position with Steve, it's just that he fears he's so emotionally fucked up that it will never work. 

Before he can decide what he wants to do, Romanov goes on. "Here's what's going to happen now. First, we're going to go back into the coffee shop and get your tea. Then I'll take you back to Steve's place, and once we're there we're going to have a long talk about trauma because clearly we are past the point where you can deny that you've got  _ something _ going on. Then we'll talk about what we're going to tell Steve.  _ Then  _ once we've gone through all that and we have a plan set up for how you're going to try to cope with this,  _ then _ , if you want to quit you can." When Bucky doesn't say anything, she adds, "That's pretty much an order. Let's get going. I've gotta leave Nigel a really, really big tip."

They re-enter the coffeehouse, Bucky rubbing the tears from his face and trying to look a little more alert. He counts his breaths while she pays and retrieves their drinks. When she hands him his tea, it's hot. "Nigel refilled it on the house, and he says he hopes you're alright." They get back into the car. Bucky feels like he should be ashamed of himself, even panicked at how things have gone out of control. He probably shouldn't even go back to Steve's house, in case Steve sees him in this state. But he's too exhausted and numb to worry about that right now.

Romanov takes him home and sets him down on Steve's couch, then takes a chair herself. "Okay, listen. First of all, stop looking at the clock. Steve isn't coming home for another three hours." He guiltily looks away from the digital clock on the TV box. "I'll try to make this quick. You clearly have PTSD, and probably panic disorder on top of that. Let's just take that as a given for the moment. No, don't say anything. I've heard it all a million times.  _ Everyone _ denies it, Bucky. Everyone wants to be immediately okay after horrible shit happens to them. I denied it for five years after I defected. But let's look at the facts. From the looks of you, you can't sleep. Your tremor is new; I'm sure it's partly physiological from all the crap Hydra did to your brain, which, by the way, nobody deserves to go through. It also gets much worse when you're stressed or anxious, which looks to be at least three quarters of the time, so there's a psychological effect going on there. I'm guessing you don't trust anyone and rarely feel like you're completely safe. You're always on high alert, trying to anticipate what's going to happen next. What Steve's gonna say, what you might do wrong in the near future, whether the last thing you did or said was stupid or not. Am I on the right track?"

He doesn't say anything, staring fixedly down into his lap. 

"That's what I thought. And I'm guessing there's more. You have nightmares when you do sleep. Maybe you don't even remember them, but you wake up shaky and still tired. You're probably having flashbacks, where a memory comes back suddenly and you can't ignore it. You might even think you're somewhere else, back in a war zone or wherever the hell Hydra had you operating."

If what she's saying is true, he's broken. If SHIELD won't wipe his memories, then he has this psychological problem that's going to follow him the rest of his life. "I don't understand  _ why _ . I never had anything like this happen during the war -- or even when Hydra had me. I was okay until  _ this _ . It makes no sense."

"Actually, it's common for PTSD symptoms to intensify  _ after _ you start to feel safe. All those memories you've been repressing, or that have been locked away from all the electroshock and memory suppression or whatever... Now that you're safe, your brain is making those connections again, allowing you to access the parts of your brain that shut off while you were in danger and stressed, allowing you to process what happened to you. I've seen it dozens of times. A vet comes back from a warzone and seems happy and healthy enough, sometimes for weeks or months, and then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the PTSD hits."

Bucky is going to hyperventilate. Or possibly start crying again.

"Okay, don't fall apart on me now. I'm really not good with emotional displays and I don't know if I can handle two in one day," she says. "Like I said, I have PTSD too and I'm fine. This isn't a death sentence. It's going to get better over time as you learn to cope with it. The first few months are probably going to be rough. You have to re-calibrate the whole way you think to fit a civilian environment. But there are ways to handle the symptoms and reduce them without literally giving yourself amnesia and risking permanent brain damage. There are specialists at SHIELD on retainer who can help you. Like, therapists who work with people with similar backgrounds. Well, as similar as anyone can really get to your background. I'm not going to  _ make _ you go, but... think of it like this: these are the people who can make you operational again. You think your ability to complete missions and follow orders is the most important thing about you. If that's true, your first priority should be, for one thing, never being electroshocked again so that you don't risk permanently damaging your brain, and secondly, finding a way to get a handle on your PTSD symptoms. Make sense?"

"I guess," he says.

"I know you're more important than your ability to complete missions, Barnes. And I hope that soon you'll want to get better for  _ yourself _ , not somebody else. I'm just framing this in a way you'll understand."

"Mm." He doesn't like being talked down to.

"Alright, I'll take that as a yes. Then I'll set you up with a therapist on Sunday, to start. It won't be much like the evaluations SHIELD put you through when you first came here. These appointments are to help you, not assess you. I'll send a driver around to pick you up, assuming you don't have a car."

"Have them stop at the corner, not at the house." He doesn't want Steve to know.

"If that's what you need."

"And ask about the memory suppression."

She shakes her haid. "It's a no-go. I'll ask, but SHIELD is going to say no. Don't get any ideas, either -- if you break in to the SHIELD headquarters, which by the way is pretty much impossible even for someone with our skillset because I helped design the security system, you'll find we don't even own electroshock tech anymore. Not since the forties." She pauses. "But I'll make you a deal. If you go see the psychologist for four weeks, and do all your homework, and nothing gets better, and you  _ still _ want induced amnesia, I'll at least talk to Stark about ways we can make it happen safely."

Probably the psychologist won't be able to do much for him; Bucky isn't convinced he's sick and not just weak and bad. But the way Natasha's talking about it, it sounds like he really doesn't have much of a choice.

Romanov checks her watch. "I've gotta get going. Don't do this to me again. I don't want to be sitting in my office thinking that everything is fine while one of my placements does something stupid and avoidable without even consulting me first. I'm responsible for you, which means your problems are  _ my _ problems and I need to know about them. If you're thinking about hurting yourself, or if you're having some kind of mental breakdown,  _ you _ call _ me _ . Don't just wait for someone to stumble across the situation like I did today." She surprises him with a swift and chaste hug from the side, the brusquely sweeps back out the door to her overpowered car.

After she leaves, he finishes his tea even though it's going cold. Then he retrieves his knives from the side-table in the sitting room where he set them down when Romanov ordered him to disarm. He hesitates, then returns them to the knife block in the kitchen. The knife he left in the bathroom he tucks back into his makeshift calf sheath. Just in case. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Bucky is starting to settle in with Steve, but he's not quite out of the woods yet. After cooking dinner for Steve for the first time, he overhears Steve playing piano. The emotions it evokes in him force him to acknowledge a new, sensitive side of himself. He feels torn between those new feelings and his belief that he's most useful as an emotionless assassin. He's able to experience emotions because he's healing from cryo and induced amnesia, so he considers self-harm as a way of self-medicating to regain the sense of calm he used to feel when he was being regularly wiped. Natasha intervenes and talks him into trying therapy before cryo or electroshock (the method Hydra used to wipe his memories), and he agrees to do so.


	7. That Sounds Difficult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky finally sees a therapist. 
> 
> Bucky accidentally breaks Steve's library and experiments with friendliness. Steve might be developing a tiny bit of a crush on him. But he's just going to ignore it. That will definitely work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings this time around. There is a tiny bit of non-graphic blood.

Bucky pretends everything's normal when Steve comes home, and luckily Steve appears to buy it.

He's extra personable at dinner, which means asking  _ two _ different questions about Steve's day and actually giving a verbal answer when Steve asks about his (even if his answer is a one-word "Good"). Steve talks through his day at work with Bucky, as he often does in the evenings -- it seems to relax him to rehash it for Bucky, and Bucky actually sort of enjoys nodding and listening. Even if he doesn't understand why Steve would want to talk to his helpmeet like they're equals, like they could possibly understand each other, he can certainly indulge him. 

Steve complains about certain aspects of SHIELD's bureaucracy and then tangents into mentioning a Hungarian spy who has defected to America and is now hiding out in a safehouse in southern Canada. SHIELD is trying to track her down and establish contact with her, as they think she might have information on the location of remaining Hydra bases in eastern Europe.

He comes around to mentioning that the Avengers task force, his team at work who's working on the Hungarian spy, has a business dinner planned at an upscale restaurant in town called Au Contraire in about a week. He sighs when he gets onto the topic. "I like the Avengers a lot. We're all friends; we meet outside of work often. Natasha's on the team, and we're pretty close. I trust them with my life, and I'd do anything for them. But I  _ hate _ the pageantry of the business dinners. The whole point of them is to keep Fury" -- Steve's boss and the director of SHIELD -- "on top of our activities, so he can monitor our team dynamic and know what we're up to. He's held responsible for whatever decisions we make in the field, so I understand him wanting to keep an eye on us, but meetings with him are always  _ really  _ tedious. And at Au Contraire, they'll all expect me to remember what fork to use..." He sighs again and forks up more leftover pasta. "Anyway, I know I didn't really sell it to you just now, but I'd like you to come with me. You can meet the rest of the team -- well, besides Nat, since you know her already. And it would be nice to have you there. I mean... someone from outside of work."

Bucky clears his throat, surprised. "I don't normally eat out." (And by "I don't normally" he means "I haven't in the past seventy years".) "Hydra didn't teach me what fork to use."

"No, no, don't worry about that." Steve touches the back of Bucky's hand reassuringly. "I'll run you through the fork order and everything beforehand. And nobody will expect your manners to be perfect. Just be polite and you'll be fine. Actually, you can be as taciturn as you want since you're my helpmeet -- you won't really be expected to interact with anyone else there, unless you want to."

"Then..." He scrambles for another reason to refuse but doesn't find one. "Okay. I'll do it."

"Great. We'll have to get you a suit..."

"A suit?" 

"Yes, this is formal attire, unfortunately." He rolls his eyes. "Like I said, a lot of pageantry. But don't worry about it. We'll go out and get you a suit. SHIELD will pay. They cover things like that for the helpmeets."

"They'll pay? Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asks, wide-eyed.

"Of course. You'll do great, Bucky. I trust you." Steve seems to notice that his fingertips are still resting atop Bucky's hand. He pulls back. "Actually," he muses, "We should probably get you fitted for a bespoke suit for stuff like this. I can tell you'd look good dressed up." Bucky's eyebrows shoot up at the compliment. Then he un-shoots them as quickly as possible since Steve doesn't seem to think anything of what he's just said. "We'll get your measurements taken. The dinner is going to be the Thursday after next, so we'll buy something off the rack in the meantime and just have the shirt fitted and the slacks hemmed. I'll get the authorization from Tony for the money. I'd actually like it if you helped out a little with the SHIELD work and got to know the team. I know from your file that you're overqualified for intelligence work. I can always use a second pair of eyes on the problems we solve." When he looks up at Bucky, popping another piece of pasta into his mouth, he has such an expression of complete confidence on his face that it takes Bucky's breath away.

"I'd like that," Bucky says softly before he can think better of it. 

* * *

 

The next day is Sunday, Bucky's first day off, and he's glad he has a therapy appointment to be overwhelmingly anxious about, because otherwise he's pretty sure he wouldn't know what to do with himself. He eats breakfast with Steve like normal. Then Steve goes off for a run and says he probably won't be back for a few hours. 

Bucky has an hour left before the driver is going to pick him up at the corner. Romanov texted him that the driver will take him to the session, but she will pick him up herself so she can check in on him too. Bucky thinks the therapist/Romanov combination is overkill, but honestly, Romanov intimidates him, so he doesn't say anything about it.

He spends the hour poking through SHIELD's secure wiki, to which he apparently has access, on his tablet, paging through their information about Russia and wishing he remembered enough of his work for Hydra to contribute something besides a few assassinations of people he knew almost nothing about.

The hour flies by and then suddenly it's time for him to leave.

Having the driver pick him up at the corner was a terrible idea, he realizes, because it means he has to actually leave the house, which is hard even when he's  _ not _ going to therapy, and then stand around, visibly, out in the open on Steve's street until the driver arrives. When he opens the front door to leave, his hands are shaking. As he walks down the street, he starts to pant, almost hyperventilating, trying to watch his twelve and his six at once. When he reaches the corner and thinks about stopping there and standing on the curb with his back to the other townhouses, exposed, he thinks he may throw up.

Luckily, as he approaches the corner trying to figure out what to do, a nondescript, grayish-blue sports car pulls up and a woman with straight black hair pulled into a ponytail rolls the window down. She says, "Sergeant Barnes, I'm your ride."

"Just Barnes is fine," he says uneasily as he climbs into the back seat. He found out a while ago from the SHIELD wiki that he apparently made Sergeant in the U. S. army before he was captured, which is why people keep calling him that. He shuts the door and the car pulls away. It smells new. He's pleased that the driver doesn't try to make conversation with him. When she pulls up to Stark tower, she tells him to head to the 9th floor, where Sam Wilson's office is.

He didn't really get a good look at the tower when Hydra drove him here in the back of the armored van, or when Romanov brought him to Steve's house for the first time. (It's strange for him to look back on those memories. He thought he was fine at the time, but in retrospect, mentally he was so deeply out of it that the memories look like a series of scenes from a dream, the long and increasingly confusing dream that was his life with Hydra for decades. The more he remembers of it, the stranger it becomes, like waking from a nightmare that seemed perfectly reasonable during the experience but afterwards reveals itself as total absurdity.)

The tower is formidable up close. It's composed of three distinct chunks of architecture, twisting around each other like competing vines and culminating in Stark's penthouse apartment. Before him is the front entrance of the building, which is guarded. There are three sets of stainless-steel, windowed double doors, probably bulletproof, each with a pair of uniformed guards standing just inside in individual airlocks. They guards are armed; from here he can see a long knife and a pistol on each one. Additionally, a small patrol of plainclothes guards, distinguishable from the crowd by their purposeful stride and concealed weapons, pace the perimeter of the building.

Bucky stops himself. He doesn't need to case the tower. He's supposed to be here; he's not actually breaking in. He should just walk through the front doors. Sooner rather than later, because right now he's surrounded by a slow trickle of pedestrians on the sidewalk and tourists taking photos he doesn't want to be captured in, and he's pretty sure he's going to have another panic attack if he stays out here in the noise and traffic any longer.

The guards stop him in the airlock. A slight, continuous breeze brushes past him towards the outside of the building. He doesn't know where he learned it, but someone once told him the entire Stark tower is pressurized so that gaseous or biological weapons dispersed outside won't enter the building. The two women ask him to show his ID.

"I don't... think I have any," he says, caught off guard. The driver is gone from outside, so if they won't let him into the building, he's not sure what his plan B is. In theory he could call a cab to go back home. In practice there's no way he's getting into a tiny metal box with a stranger who's not even affiliated with SHIELD.

The guards exchange a skeptical glance. "What's your name?" one of them asks.

"James Barnes."

One of them has started to frisk him with a bored expression. He tenses up when she touches him, but quickly relaxes. He's used to being touched in a businesslike way by strangers; it's not nearly as overwhelming as when Steve touches him for no reason. "He's carrying a knife." Should he have left it at home? "Also, his left arm is a prosthetic. Mechanical. Is it outfitted as a weapon?"

"Yeah," he says. His throat is dry.

"Hang on. Here, I've got him in the database," the other guard says, tapping at a computer. "He's expected. He's here for Wilson. Says he's allowed to carry close-combat arms, and his prosthetic is cleared as well."

"Let me see." She looks over her coworker's shoulder at the computer screen, and apparently satisfies herself with what she finds there. "Yep, you're all clear. This is just a formality, but please look into the red light for a second." She taps a dark square embedded into the wall of the antechamber and it lights up. Bucky glances at it and it switches colors from red to green. "Thanks. Please go ahead inside. The elevators will be on your left."

He thanks them and manages to make his way to the 9th floor without speaking to anyone else. Despite its impressive architecture, on the inside, at least on the ground and 9th floors, the building is like most of the other office buildings Bucky has seen, either while casing them for a hit or watching through their windows for a target to appear, or sniping from them. It's a little swankier than most. There are shiny, freshly waxed marble floors; the elevators have floor-to-ceiling mirrors (which Bucky tries to avoid looking at) and deep-pile carpet that must be a pain to maintain. 

It's strange being a legal visitor. He doesn't have to hide his face or try to look inconspicuous. He can just walk right out of the elevator and down the hall to Wilson's office, and nobody says anything about it.

He's already exhausted by the time he reaches the office, but he knocks anyway.

A friendly-looking man with short black hair and a circle of dark beard framing his mouth opens the door. He's dressed in a soft-looking blue sweater and slacks and when he sees Bucky, he smiles as though Bucky is an old friend. "You must be Sergeant Barnes."

"Bucky."

"Come in. This is my office," Wilsonsays. He has a soft, smooth voice. 

Bucky gives the room a brief once-over as Wilson asks him to take a seat on a faded brown sofa. One wall of the room is occupied by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, piled with volumes on psychology and social work as well as texts on specific topics like alcoholism and OCD. Wilson sits at a low-profile, black desk, atop which is a desktop computer, switched off. No webcam, and Bucky doesn't see any other cameras at first glance, but there are enough tchotchkes and potted plants around the room that it would be easy to conceal one. A low table sits between the couch and the office chair in which Sam is currently situating himself.

There's another armchair by the couch, and a print of Monet's "Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies on the other wall by the window. "Window's tinted," Wilson mentions when he sees Bucky's gaze land on it. "And bulletproof glass. Actually, it's proof against a lot more than just bullets. Stark really went all out on this place." He smiles. "Before we get started, just so you know, there's no monitoring of any kind in this room. You also have complete patient confidentiality. That means I'm not legally allowed to talk to anyone about anything you say in here, unless you're a clear danger to yourself or others. And if a situation like that arises, I will do my best to talk to you about how you want to handle it and take your wishes into account. You will always be in charge of your treatment here. Does that sound OK?"

Bucky nods.

"Great. I guess you already know I'm Sam Wilson. You can just call me Sam. Want me to tell you a little about my background, or did Natasha already give you the run-down?" 

"You can tell me."

"Alright. I'm technically a social worker; I used to work down at the VA, counseling and running group therapy with war veterans. SHIELD brought me on a few years ago to help with confidential counseling for traumatized agents. Stark has had me go through some specialized training on augmented humans and people who have been through what you might call extreme situations -- battlefield scenarios that only someone augmented would live through, torture, medical experimentation, that kind of thing. So I specialize in working with people who have been through severe trauma, though I also work with people who are just stressed by the high-tension nature of their jobs.

"So, I have some intake questions I usually go through with new patients, if that's alright." Bucky nods. "First off, what brings you to my office? What do you want to work on in therapy?"

"I assume you know already," Bucky says. When Sam doesn't respond, he adds, "From Natasha."

"Yes, she did refer you, but I usually try to get a client's story directly from them, rather than through a third party."   


Bucky clears his throat and looks out the window. His story. Where to even start? He figures he should probably at least try to be honest with Sam if he expects to get anything out of therapy. "I have a job as a helpmate for SHIELD, and I've been having some problems with it."

"Okay. What kind of problems?"

"I don't... know." He sighs. "I came to SHIELD from Hydra. I worked for them as an assassin. I killed a lot of people. I was really good at my job for them. They sold me to SHIELD three weeks ago, and I thought I would be a field agent for SHIELD as well. I'm a sniper; SHIELD could use me. I'm also trained in tactics. But SHIELD had a bunch of psychologists examine me and they said I wasn't fit to be put back out into the field. They said I was too fucked up. Sorry."

"That's fine. Trust me, anything you can say, I've heard worse language. Did they say what problems they thought you had, specifically?"

"PTSD." He rolls his eyes. "At first I thought that was total bullshit, but I guess I don't know anymore."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, like I said, I've been having a lot of issues working as a helpmeet. At first it was mostly flashbacks. Then on Sunday I guess I had a breakdown. I freaked out in front of Romanov and she said it was a panic attack and made me come here."

"I see."

"The thing is, I'm not actually broken. Hydra used to use this machine on me, the memory suppression machine --"

"Can you explain what that is?"

"It's like this big chair, it looks like a dentist chair, with straps. They strap you down and put a bunch of wires on your head. Then I guess they turn it on, and when it's over you don't remember anything."

"Total amnesia?"

"Yeah, it just gets rid of all your memories. And then you can go and do a mission, or whatever you have to do, without that stuff getting in the way."

"Wow. That sounds a little extreme."

He shrugs. "It worked."

"So they would use it on you when?"

"Every mission. They'd pick me up from the extraction point and take me back to the room where they kept it and strap me down. They'd shove this rubber bit in my mouth so I wouldn't bite my tongue off..." He starts to fall into the memory. By the end, the missions he still remembers fairly clearly, the machine was an old friend, the routine comforting. And yet it was still painful, still made his heart beat wildly. He would still sometimes thrash against the restraints, panicking, trying to break them... "They would strap me down to the chair so tight I couldn't move. And my handler would... would talk to me before they turned it on... She'd tell me I was worthless without it..."

"Hang on a minute," Sam says. Bucky jolts out of the memory. Sam is frowning at him. "I think I see the general picture, but let's not move too fast here. Going into the details of your experiences with Hydra might be a little heavy for the first session."

"But that's the whole problem. The wiping, the memory suppression. When that was still happening regularly I was fine. Now that it's not, that's when the problems started."

"Well, we'll certainly talk about that. But we don't have to start right at the heart of the problem. I mean, I'm your therapist, but I'm also a stranger to you right now, and a lot of people see their experiences during war as very personal."

Bucky shrugs. "Doesn't matter. Everyone's a stranger to me."

Sam winces. "Even so, you don't have to go right to the deep dark secrets, alright? Maybe we could go back and talk about the circumstances of the panic attack you had when Natasha referred you."

"The panic attack is irrelevant. It's just a symptom. The memory stuff is the problem."

"It's not  _ just _ a symptom. A lot of what we do in therapy is learning to manage symptoms. Even without discussing the original cause of the panic, there's a lot we could learn from talking about it. Most patients like to start with smaller problems like that and work their way up to the traumatizing stuff."

"Yeah, but I'm not most patients," Bucky snaps. He grits his teeth in frustration and his hands curl into fists. Sam doesn't get it. Bucky doesn't have  _ time _ to start with small stuff and work his way up. He needs to be fixed  _ now _ before things with Steve get any worse. He jerks up off the couch, standing over Sam. "You've never met someone like me before. You're not qualified -- nobody is qualified to deal with this, except Hydra. My handler." Bucky only has  _ one _ problem and it's the fact that  _ nobody knows how to handle him _ . Nobody here understands what he needs, how to treat him as a subordinate, how to help him by taking the memories away; nobody seems to understand how hard it is and he's coping so badly with it that he's probably going to --

"Alright, alright. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I shouldn't have implied that you didn't know where to start. I just wanted you to know that you have the  _ option _ of starting with something that requires a little less trust. But we can start wherever you like. How about you take a deep breath..."

He sucks in a breath through his teeth automatically at the direct order, and it actually settles him a little. 

"Good. You're doing great. Now when you're ready you can just sit down again on that couch and we'll start over."

Bucky considers storming out of the office instead. But now that he's paused for a second he remembers what Romanov told him about therapy being the maintenance that will enable him to do his job for Steve. The job is the only important thing right now, his job and doing it well enough to go back to being a field operative in a year. Even if this seems like total bullshit right now, he has to try it. He sits back down.

"Okay. If you're comfortable, I won't stop you from continuing. It's your choice what we talk about in here."

"I want to continue." He takes a deep breath. "The machine worked by electroshock. Romanov told me it's not safe -- it can cause brain damage. And apparently nobody knows if the serum can fix that or not. So... I guess that's off the table. But without it, I'm... I've started to remember some of the missions I went on."

"Missions -- those were hits?"

"Yes, assassinations. When I didn't remember them, it was easy to do what I needed to do without thinking much. My handler taught me to be emotionless, to be a historyless tool for Hydra. That's how I thought I would work for my client. I'm a helpmeet; that means I just do whatever he tells me to do, without questioning it. I wouldn't need a memory for that. I could just be an automaton. But it's not that easy anymore. I've started to, to feel things... about him, about being a helpmeet, about the missions I ran. And it's so hard to reconcile myself now with the me that killed people, that worked for Hydra..."

"And how long did you work for them?"

"Seventy years," he responds easily. "I was only awake for a year, eight months and seventeen days."

"Seventy years," Sam repeats quietly. "And now you're a helpmeet."

"Yes, and I'm not an empty vessel anymore. With Hydra, I was like a cup that they could fill with whatever they needed me to be. Now it's like... there's all this stuff already in the cup..."

"You're having to face your past self, whom you never had to understand before because you didn't even remember who that was at the time, while also constructing someone new who can live in a house in close, intimate quarters with someone else."

"Yes. That's the problem."

"That sounds so, _so_ difficult."

Bucky looks up, surprised. "Yeah, I guess it is."

* * *

Sam and Bucky talk for the whole hour and a half he's been scheduled. Sam manages to circle Bucky back around to the actual panic attack, and they discuss the physiology of that, the way neurons work in the brain and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. A lot of it is new information to Bucky; neurology was not particularly advanced in the 30's and anyway he only got a high school education before he enlisted. Knowing the names of the parts of the body involved, and the way the panic response works, demystifies the event a little and makes him feel a tiny bit more in control.

He still knows he needs to stop having flashbacks and panic attacks as soon as possible, and he still doesn't have a plan yet for how to make that happen. Sam said he wanted to learn more about the type of electroshock used in the memory suppression machine so he can better understand how it might have affected Bucky before he can decide where to start.

Even so, Bucky finds himself calmer walking out of the appointment. In fact, far from being wired, he's exhausted. He hasn't talked that much in one go since... well, ever since he can remember. Which isn't saying much, since he remembers almost nothing of his own adult life, but still.

Romanov is brusque when she picks him up in the car, but Bucky thinks that's probably usual for her. "Did it go alright?"

"Yeah," Bucky says, "For a head-shrink, he wasn't too bad."

"I thought you'd like him. Same time next Sunday?"

"Sure."

* * *

 

 

That evening, Steve drives home from a post-work coffee date with Clint Barton that had turned into about an hour of Barton going on and on about a monster truck rally he had just attended and how awesome it was, complete with fully narrated descriptions of all the crashes, followed by a brief five minutes of Steve catching Barton up on his life. Barton is a character, but Steve can't deny that he and Natasha have something special. He respects him because he makes her happy.

He opens the door to a silent house and wonders if Bucky's home. He can rarely hear him moving about the house, even if he's cleaning the kitchen or something else that would normally make noise. The guy is incredibly silent by default and seems to make noise only when he thinks about it. Steve has noticed that when Bucky is walking directly behind Steve he'll deliberately hit his feet against the floor or even tap the wall so Steve knows where he is, after he startled Steve a few times coming up behind him.

He calls out, "Bucky!" as he shuts the front door behind him. Right away he hears a loud clattering crash and a bitten-off yelp from down the hall, followed by the unmistakable thump-rustle of books hitting the floor.

He drops his backpack and hurries to the library, the source of the sound, where Barnes is standing on top of a step-stool. He whips around to stare at Steve with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. An entire four-foot shelf of the bookshelf is broken off, lying next to the stepstool, the twenty or so books it held splayed out around it in a semicircle. "I... I..." Bucky stammers, stepping off the side of the stepladder. "I'm sorry. I'll put them back. I remember the order. I didn't..."

"It's alright," Steve says quickly. "What happened? Are you okay? Bucky, you're bleeding." A thread of blood snakes down from Bucky's temple, where the shelf must have gouged him on the way down. 

"The front door startled me, and sometimes..." He gestures to his prosthetic, the first time he's pointed it out to Steve. "This thing has a lot of power, and if I'm not thinking, I can break things. I'm really sorry, Steve."

"Bucky, seriously, it's fine. The shelf can be replaced. Come here. Let me see this..." He reaches a hand out to cup the side of Bucky's face and bring him closer.

He sees Bucky freeze, his startled expression intensify for a moment, and he's sure Bucky will pull back, but he doesn't. His hand makes soft contact with Bucky's pleasantly warm face. He feels his heart jolt when he touches Bucky, the warmth of Bucky's skin reverberating around him like a bell ringing. He tries not to show it in his face, briefly struggling to get control of his feelings. Bucky doesn't need this right now. Steve needs to stay professional.

It's not like Steve has never had a little crush on a helpmeet before When Natasha was his helpmeet, she used to service him sometimes, and he would return the favor. It eventually had developed into a deep, intimate connection, a playful yet committed relationship that they had both enjoyed. The kind of intimacy that comes from sharing the same unique experiences, from sharing the life of a soldier.

But Bucky is a whole different story. For one thing, he and Bucky aren't having sex. It's not like Steve hasn't thought about asking him about some of the items on the list, but for now he's just been trying to get Bucky used to being in the same room with Steve and  _ talking _ to him. He's trying to trust Bucky as much as possible, but he also still isn't sure that Bucky would be able to articulate it if Steve asked for something that made him uncomfortable. Steve is happier leaving that stuff for later. 

Steve isn't particularly lusting after Bucky, either. Sure, Bucky  _ is  _ beautiful. His jaw, the way his dark hair frames his face, his startlingly bright eyes... Steve would be lying if he said he didn't appreciate Bucky's aesthetic. But his interest is more than that. Steve wants to be around Bucky all the time; he wants Bucky to open up to him, to tell him about his past and his hopes for the future. He wants to look after Bucky. He wants to let Bucky take care of him.

It's also different from what Steve had with Natasha because Bucky is clearly deeply traumatized. He's trying to hide it from Steve and play it off like he's just an automaton with no emotions, which makes sense. Steve has refrained from reading Bucky's full files; he's only seen the parts Natasha deemed required reading. But from what he  _ has _ read, he thinks it's a pretty good guess that Hydra forced Bucky to be that way, treating his emotions as liabilities and unnecessary. Steve has seen veterans before who pretend to be totally emotionless so they don't have to face the scope of their own fear, grief, trauma... 

In short, it makes sense that Steve would have... feelings for Bucky. They've gotten closer in the past few weeks, and they're building a fragile, but growing, trust in each other. But Steve's 99% sure that Bucky isn't at all ready to have an intimate relationship even if he  _ was _ interested in Steve, and besides that, they've only just barely established a tentative  _ friendship _ . 

All of which means Steve needs to ignore the butterflies and focus. He takes a deep breath. The cut is weeping slowly, about two inches long, a short but ragged gash. "It's not deep. I don't think you need stitches or anything. Do you feel dizzy or nauseous? Did you pass out when it hit you?"

"No, none of that."

"Okay. How about you go to the bathroom and rinse off your face, and I'll clean this up and then come help you."

"I can pick up the books and then fix the cut," Bucky counters.

"It's your day off, Buck. Don't worry about the mess. Also, you're still bleeding. Go clean yourself up and I'll finish in here. That's an order," Steve jokes.

"Order? But you said it's my day off," Bucky says playfully, his mouth curling up at one corner. As soon as the words leave Bucky's lips he loses his ironic expression and blanches like he wants to pluck them back out of the air. Like he's not sure if he's allowed to make jokes to Steve or not. Which, Steve thinks wryly, would probably explain why he's seemed completely humorless up until now. 

Steve tries to hide his surprise and concern and instead lets his amusement show on his face. "Aw, Bucky, I'm hurt," he says, laying his hand on his chest in mock offense. "You're saying you only take orders from me on working days? You don't do this just for fun?"

"No, sir," Bucky says, the smirk back. "I'll take orders from you anytime." And he actually  _ winks _ at Steve, though his expression is still a strange mix of playfulness and anxiety.

Steve's eyes widen and he can't keep himself from blushing. _What the hell? Was that an innuendo_ _? _ "Alright, go, go clean yourself up. I've got it covered in here." He watches Bucky in amused surprise as he heads down the hallway. The playful exchange is probably the most Bucky has said to him in one go in the entire past week, and the Bucky Steve just glimpsed is nothing like the taciturn, fearful man Steve has come to know. He's not sure what to make of it.

He quickly organizes the books into a pile and sets the shattered shelf aside, then follows Bucky down the hall. He hesitates before walking through Bucky's open door into his room and finds him in his bathroom with the door open, swabbing the cut on his forehead with iodine from the first-aid kit under the sink. Steve winces in sympathy, but Bucky doesn't even twitch as he tosses the cotton ball into the trash. He takes out a butterfly bandage. 

"Let me get that," Steve says. Bucky starts, as if he didn't realize Steve was standing in the doorway, but hands over the bandage. Steve tries to be gentle as he closes the cut, but it doesn't seem to make a difference to Bucky. He doesn't react. Steve finds himself wondering if that's something Hydra taught him, too. He covers the wound with a square of gauze and fixes that in place. "You can take the gauze off when it stops bleeding. You're sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine." His expression is closed again. The playful exchange a minute ago seems like a distant illusion. Is that what Bucky used to be like before the war? It doesn't matter, Steve thinks. This is the Bucky that lives in his house now. Still, the stony facade is discouraging. "Can I be dismissed?"

"You're in your own room, Bucky. I'll leave you alone, though." He turns around and makes for the door.

"Steve, I..." Bucky starts, and Steve stops. "I know I make mistakes sometimes, but I'm trying to be good... I'm trying to learn..."

He sounds vulnerable and submissive, almost childish. He had seemed so confident just a moment ago, but now it's like that never happened. Steve can never seem to predict him, always trailing one step behind his inscrutable thoughts. "Of course, Bucky. You're doing fine," he insists, unnerved. "I'll tell you if you ever do something wrong and help you fix it. But you're doing great. The shelf isn't a big deal, okay?"

"Okay," Bucky says, and turns away again without further comment. This time Steve does slip away, bewildered and a little bit inexplicably sad. 


	8. The Fitting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky gets fitted for a suit and nearly terrifies the tape-measure guy. Steve is still trying to ignore his crush, and it's still working absolutely definitely for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No serious content in this one; continued discussions of PTSD symptoms and paranoia, but nothing too intense.
> 
> As a side note, I've never been fitted for a suit, so that scene is purely research and speculation.

The only thing stronger than Bucky's habitual terror, his constant underlying belief that his handler is about to leap out of nowhere and punish him for  _ something _ he's done wrong, or too slowly, or not carefully enough, is his burning desire to open up to Steve.

Now that he's tried it -- tried joking with Steve, actually communicating with him -- it's intoxicating. He looks forward to dinner with Steve all day; he thinks about it the whole time he's cooking dinner: what Steve might say about work today, whether Steve will have news of his friends, and even what Bucky might tell Steve about his day -- about the nice cashier at the grocery store who politely speaks to him even though Bucky seems to terrify most strangers, or about what new things he's learned to cook, or the way he's reorganized Steve's library... He gets excited about what Steve might ask of him that night. He's found all kinds of creative tasks for Bucky; the other day he had him read Steve reports aloud in the office, tactical reports, so that Steve could close his eyes and envision the layout of the building, eyes darting back and forth behind his eyelids. It was work, but it was fascinating to watch Steve play out the scenarios described in the report, to watch him think.

Steve asks him to sit with him while he plays piano (Bucky has found ways to enjoy it without falling apart), to read books and summarize them for him (he finds himself to be a voracious reader, though he doesn't think he's read a book since high school). And he gently coaxes Bucky to open up to him emotionally. At first he asks thoroughly innocuous questions about Bucky's favorites -- does he have a favorite movie? Color? Does he prefer cats or dogs? Why? But slowly the questions grow more probing. How is Bucky feeling at the end of each day? Does he have any fond memories of his family? What was his favorite activity when he was a kid, before the war?

At first Bucky resists Steve's questioning. Even Bucky has to admit that Steve is becoming a friend, but he's still his boss. He gives short answers, trying not to give too much away. Often all he has to say is "I don't remember." But Steve keeps asking, and when Bucky gives an answer Steve rewards him with information about himself. Steve is a cat person; he loves the color green; when he was young he was frequently ill but liked to go to the beach when he was well and stare into the tidepools there. Bucky wants to  _ know _ Steve and be known by him. It's a new impulse.

He asks Sam about it and Sam says it's healthy and normal.

Yet when he lets go during his those conversations, when he says whatever he's thinking without screening it or cracks a joke or reveals something about himself, the part of him that seems to be stuck permanently in the Hydra base is horrified. He's allowing Steve to touch him, getting close to him, treasuring the memories they have together. All weaknesses that could be exploited by an enemy or spy. 

From the perspective of his handler his behavior is abysmal.

But she isn't here.

Twice during the following week he's hit by flashbacks. The first time it's while he's cooking dinner before Steve gets home. One moment he's chopping potatoes, the next he's in the Hydra base, his handler standing over him with the electroshock wand -- not the memory suppression device, but something more like a cattle prod used to hurt him. 

He fucking hated the wand.

He's strapped to a cold metal table, struggling against cuffs; this must have been after they realized he could break through leather or even chain and started using solid steel for the cuffs. His head is splitting; his vision sparks with pain, and he can hardly move or breathe. The hair on the back of his neck is standing up in anticipation of... whatever she's about to do next. 

She leans forward, and he holds his breath -- he can't even remember what he's being punished for -- and a line of fire runs down his back. He thinks he's being sliced open, he's crying, screaming, which just provokes her further...

Then he's lying face-up on the hard kitchen floor, his chest heaving with sobbing breaths and his throat raw from shrieking. He lies there staring at the ceiling for a long time, hoping the residents of the townhouse on either side haven't called the police. But nobody comes. He drinks a glass of water and tries to be mindful and notice the light, the smells, and the sounds around him. He breathes in for a count of 4, hold sit for a count of 8, and exhales for a count of 4. Sam recommended these as simple coping strategies for him, to draw him out of the memory completely and help him stop going somewhere else.

He guesses it helps. Soon enough he goes back to the potatoes. His hands are still shaking, and a few times he hits the prosthetic with the knife because his right is trembling so badly, and he is thankful it's made of tank-proof metal and plastic, and not flesh. 

There's a second one, later in the week. He flashes back to another hit during the evening. He's in his room alone, but Steve is home, drawing in his bedroom. (Steve thinks Bucky doesn't know about his art, but he does. He knows what Steve is doing when he locks himself in there at night.) Bucky tries to avert it, to think of something pleasant or do one of the mindfulness exercises Sam taught him, but he can't pull himself all the way out of it. He's just alert enough to bite down on the knuckles of his flesh hand to keep from making a sound as he hyperventilates on his bed. It's... progress. Sort of. 

He shrugs when Steve asks about the marks the next morning. He doesn't need to know, and they're already fading, anyway.

By the end of the week he's exhausted, and then it's Saturday, and Steve is tapping on his bedroom door. "Bucky? The fitting for the suit is today. Are you ready to go?"

"Hang on, I gotta get my shoes," he says, bouncing up from where he's laying on his bed playing with his tablet. The funny thing is, as tired as he is, he still feels a glow of excitement at the thought of spending the day with Steve. 

* * *

Bucky is wearing his regulation black clothing when he finally emerges from his room, and Steve is excited to see him in a nicer outfit, particularly since this will all be on SHIELD's dime. Steve can tell as soon as Bucky comes out of his room that he's in a good mood: he smiles at Steve, tucking his hair behind his ears, and Steve's heart flutters. He tries hard not to show it on his face, but it doesn't matter because Bucky isn't looking at his face anymore -- his eyes drag down Steve's front, almost as though he's checking him out. "You look nice," Bucky says.

It catches him off guard -- he's just wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans. "Thanks. Let's get going."

 

* * *

Steve watches Bucky as they walk into the Virtuous Seamstress, interested in his reaction. The place has a particular atmosphere of luxury: deep pile carpeting, shelves and tables made of rich mahogany, bolts of high-quality fabric in every imaginable color leaned up against the walls. Steve's not sure whether Bucky will like it, or it'll put him on edge.

"It's beautiful in here," Bucky volunteers before Steve can even ask him what he thinks. "I want to see all the fabric."

"You can," Steve says. "We'll have plenty of time."

As they enter, a very short, elderly woman hustles up to them, no more than four and a half feet tall. Bucky's eyes widen; he was probably expecting someone about a foot taller and maybe thirty years younger. He recovers quickly as Steve greets here. "Steve!" she exclaims, as though she had no idea they were coming. "It's wonderful to see you, dear. And you must be Sergeant Barnes. Stevie told me about you." She extends a hand and Bucky takes it hesitantly; she gives him a firm handshake as Bucky smirks at Steve, probably about the nickname. Steve doesn't care. He'd let Louise call him pretty much whatever she wanted. The 70s slang she sometimes comes out with when she's fitting him for Fury's stupid events is outrageous.

"Now, you're here for a fitting today, yes?"

"Bucky's getting fitted for a suit," he says, laying his hand gently on Bucky's shoulder. Bucky seems to unconsciously shift into the touch. Steve wasn't sure if he'd be okay with the kind of casual touching they do in Steve's home when they're out in public, but it doesn't seem to bother him. "And we want to buy something off the rack for him, as well, and have some small alterations made so he can wear it to a dinner in week or so."

"Nothing for you, hon?"

"Not today, Louise."

"Oh, I'll talk you into something, just you wait." She wags a finger at him, then gestures them towards the back room. "We'd better get started; there's a lot to do. We'll do this in the private room, in the back here."

Steve drops his hand from Bucky's shoulder to rest on his upper back as he follows him towards the fitting room. Bucky glances back at Steve as they weave through the tables piled with colorful shirts and jackets, giving Steve a reassuring smile. Steve remembers when he was just a few weeks out from being defrosted, mentally only days removed from active duty in World War II. He would have liked a hand on his back guiding him through civilian life, then. Bucky shouldn't have to go through all of this alone. He really does need a suit, but Steve's ulterior motive for this outing is to give Bucky a positive experience of the outside world, other than just buying groceries each week, which as far as Steve knows is pretty much as far outside the house as Bucky has gone.

Bucky stiffens when they enter the back room, eyes darting between the floor-to-ceiling mirrors on three sides of the room. The light is dim, from sconces on the walls, and the soft green carpet keeps the room from being too echoey, but the effect of the mirrors is still a little intimidating. Bucky keeps his eyes trained on the ground, like he'd rather not see himself. Louise leads them into the middle of the room and Steve follows him closely. Framed in the mirror, they make an unusual pair: Steve's golden hair is shiny and pushed back from his face; Bucky's dark hair frames his face closely in messy waves. Steve's eyes are bright blue; Bucky's are dark and intriguing. Steve wears white; Bucky is in black. Steve is built like a brick house, Bucky like a tightly braided whip. Steve is staring straight into their reflection, admiring how they look next to each other; Bucky's gaze darts around the room, probably cataloging threats and escape routes. 

They would make a cute couple, despite all that, Steve thinks. Then he thinks,  _ Shut up, Steve. _

Louise's assistant Raoul does most of the actual measurement (Louise primarily handles the sewing). He's a quiet young man, un-intimidating. He gets out the tape measure as Louise starts calling out instructions. Bucky is still tense, so Steve stays by his side, staying out of the way while still resting his hand on Bucky's shoulder or back as Raoul flutters around giving measurements. "What's his stance like? Shoulder slope?" Raoul presses the tape measure to Bucky's shoulders as Steve steps back a little to allow him room. Bucky draws in a long, shaking breath as Raoul calls out a number. He seems tense, but far from panicking. "Alright, do his neck. Full chest." The sight of the tape measure looped around Bucky's broad chest almost makes Steve totally short-circuit. Even nervous and twitchy, Bucky is so beautiful standing erect at military attention, his practical work clothing hugging the curves and swells of his compact musculature. 

Steve catches Bucky's face in the mirror. Bucky is gazing fixedly at the far wall, his lower lip trapped between his teeth where he's worrying it, soundless and expressionless. He's gone quiet, which isn't that surprising. He knows Bucky isn't exactly used to being touched. "Alright, full shoulder width?" Louise is scratching down all Raoul's numbers on her worn clipboard. Louise calls out "Upper thigh," and Raoul says, "Could you slip your sweatpants off for a minute?

Bucky doesn't answer. He shoots Steve a look, sending a message with his eyes that Steve can't decode, and grabs Steve's hand with his metal left hand. Bucky's grip is tight, almost crushing. Surprised, Steve taps Raoul on the shoulder. "Can we take a break? Get some air for a second?"

He leads Bucky back out onto the street. Winter is coming on inexorably, and the air is still as crisp as it was during Steve's early morning jog, the sunlight moderate even near midday. Bucky follows obediently behind him.

"You doing okay?" Steve asks.

"I'm fine," Bucky says. He hesitates. "But I..."

"You can tell me," Steve says. "If you're not comfortable being touched, I'll just tell Louise and --"

"It's not that," Bucky says, and he sheepishly hikes the left leg of his pants up to reveal a knife -- one of Steve's kitchen knives, he's pretty sure, though he didn't notice that it was missing -- crudely anchored to his calf with what appear to be rubber bands. "I didn't want to scare him if he saw this," he says.

Steve gathers himself, trying to keep an even keel. That was _not_ what he was expecting. "Buck, do you... do you wear this all the time?"

He shrugs, then nods, gripping his prosthetic with his other arm uncomfortably. Without asking, Steve knows Bucky probably sleeps with it close at hand.   


"Are you... afraid of _me_ , Bucky?" Could he still be that scared of Steve -- so terrified he feels the need to be constantly armed?

"No," Bucky says slowly. "I don't think so. I'm just... used to being afraid. I'm always... afraid." 

Steve exhales shakily. Bucky doesn't say what he's afraid of specifically, but there are plenty of unpleasant possibilities. Maybe Bucky worries that Steve could turn out to be like the handlers described in his files. They all used physical punishment on him in varying degrees -- if those were the only people Steve had had contact with for decades, he would probably want to be armed all the time too. Maybe Bucky is afraid of being hurt again. Maybe he worries that Hydra could come back for him and try to kill him once they've realized Bucky is starting to remember his work with them and could pass on intelligence to SHIELD -- it's a thought that has crossed Steve's mind. 

In any case, Steve can understand the formless, all-encompassing fear. The desire to have some small way to strike back. Bucky could probably do a lot of damage with a knife, even one that small. "Will you give it to me? Just for now? We can talk about this later."

Bucky hands it over, looking up at Steve through his lashes. "Are you mad?"

It's an interesting question. Bucky has asked Steve if he's going to be fired before -- he asks all the time, often after relatively minor mistakes. But this might be the first time he's actually asked Steve how he  _ feels _ about something Bucky has done. "I'm not." Steve tucks the knife gingerly into his pocket, settling it so it won't cut him or pierce the fabric. "I... understand. Thank you for telling me you had it. Good call. Besides that, are you alright? I know the whole process is kind of invasive..."

"No, I'm fine. We can go back inside," he smiles, "Stevie."

The nickname, the one Bucky just heard Louise used, hits Steve full in the groin.  _ Fuck _ . For a second his head swims. But the next second he manages to get a friendly, hopefully non-lustful smile back on his face. "Only Louise gets to call me that," he laughs, and immediately wishes he hadn't said it. He wants Bucky to say it again. "Let's just stay out here for one more moment. It was getting kind of stuffy in there, anyway. I need some air even if you don't." Bucky is perched on the edge of a park bench, and Steve takes a seat next to him and absentmindedly leans his shoulder into Bucky's side. He's deceptively solid where Steve presses against him; it's at odds with both the graceful, weightless way he moves, and the flighty aspect of his changeable, multifaceted personality.

Steve is fascinated by him.

After a moment, Bucky loops his arm over the back of the bench behind Steve's shoulders, not quite touching him but encircling him, almost protectively. He seems content to sit quietly for the moment; he has that focused, yet detached, look on his face he gets whenever he's settling in to an activity, like when Steve puts on a movie or Bucky starts a new book that he intends to finish in the same evening.

They go back in to finish up a minute later. Bucky grabs Steve's hand again once they're back in the fitting room, and slips his pants off so Raoul can finish with his legs. Steve tries not to look. He also tries to ignore the sweat pooling in his armpits despite the fact that the room isn't that warm. He definitely does not catch a glimpse of Bucky's thigh muscles in the mirror and forget what country he's in for a second.

Bucky sags a little, almost imperceptibly, when Raoul steps away. Louise snaps her head up from the clipboard. "Alrighty, this all looks good, dears. Thank you for being so patient. Let me just find you something off the rack for now. Any color preferences?" Bucky shakes his head. "Great. I'll be back with you in a second."

While Louise goes through fabrics and cuts, Steve and Bucky wander out to the main room of the shop, and Bucky walks through the bolts of fabric on display systematically, running his fingers over them, both his prosthetic and flesh hands (Steve wonders how much he can actually feel with his metal arm) and occasionally unrolling a fold of the fabric so he can hold it up to the light or even skim it across his cheek to feel it better. It reminds Steve, a bit perversely, of those videos online where a wild deer has gotten into an Ikea. Bucky is barely accustomed to civilian life in Steve's house. Sometimes Steve catches him looking at the walls themselves as if he can't quite understand where he is or how he could fit into the setting of Steve's home. Some of his habits also give away his continuing struggle to adjust. He knows Bucky has a significant cache of nonperishable food in his closet, for example, that he's secreted away from the kitchen when Steve hasn't been paying attention. And he knows that more often than not Bucky sleeps curled up on top of his bed like a cat rather than actually under the covers, or even sleeps on the floor. (Not that Steve watches Bucky sleep frequently or anything; he occasionally leaves the door open when he sleeps.) 

It reminds Steve of back when he used to sweep his house with a flashlight for bugs once a week. He remembers living in a home with a completely empty fridge for six months, only eating takeout because he was too afraid to settle down and put down roots. He adjusted slowly, and it was hard on him emotionally, so hard he almost didn't make it out the other side. 

Besides Bucky's obvious wrong-footedness in the space, though, he actually seems to be enjoying himself in his own single-minded way.

"Steve? I think she wants us back," Bucky says, gesturing towards Louise, who brings them back to the back room holding up a bundle of clothing -- pants, a jacket, a waistcoat, and a shirt.

"I would have brought you more options, but I know this will suit him just fine. We can find a tie and shoes when you're done; I gave you a black tie to start with. Try this on and let me know if anything needs changing." She turns and heads for the door.

"Want me to leave?" Steve offers.

"That's not necessary." Bucky has already started stripping again. Steve turns all the way around to give Bucky some privacy, only to be mildly horrified to find himself facing a mirror, looking straight at Bucky's half-naked form.

Steve hasn't actually seen the entire prosthetic arm before, he realizes; Bucky only wears long sleeves, either because he runs cold or to hide it. 

The prosthetic resembles his other arm in shape, but otherwise doesn't make any attempt to pass for the original. It's made of a mix of metal paneling and translucent, blue-and-white plastics, and outfitted with an array of tiny LEDs glowing blue and white. It's all smooth lines, and Steve could tell that it's weaponized even if he didn't know from the file that it's equipped with an embedded knife that can be unsheathed and detached, little retractable blades in the fingers that could be described as claws, and some kind of embedded taser that SHIELD deactivated before they let Bucky out of the tower. 

Even so, it's beautiful.

Bucky's body, too... his light-brown skin is dusted all over with black hair that's thicker in the center of his chest and leads down to a well-defined happy trail. His torso and upper arms are as well-muscled as Steve had expected even through the loose-fitting clothing he prefers. He sweeps his undershirt off, and his hair falls in disarray about his shoulders.

There's a thick scar now visible between Bucky's prosthetic arm and his torso, distinct from the rest of his skin and from the prosthetic. It's a thick rim of red, and it looks raw where the prosthetic is anchored. The scar is ridged and swirling, resembling a bad burn. Steve both wants and really doesn't want to know how he got it; he hasn't read that part of the file. Two thick, black straps anchor the prosthetic to Bucky's upper back and other arm, explaining how it moves so naturally with the rest of his body.

Bucky drops his shirt beside him, then catches Steve's eye in the reflection.

"Like what you see?" he murmurs in a low voice, smirking.

Steve feels a jolt of  _ something _ down his back. "I... Sorry." He drops his eyes to the floor.

Bucky laughs, a short, dry bark that's still barely familiar to Steve. He hears him slip his pants off behind him, then the arranging of clothing and clinking of a belt buckle as he pulls on the suit Louise left. In a minute, Bucky says, "Steve?"

"Yeah? Are you decent?"

"Yes. Does this fit?"

Steve turns around. 

Louise chose a matte, slate-grey suit for him, and it looks like a shadow cloaking Bucky's body in the dim light. The feel of it is perfect for him: understated, yet refined. It also fits him like a glove.

He steps forward, looking Bucky up and down, enthralled. The tapered trousers, the tight shoulders and sleeves of the coat, all of it serves to accentuate the well-muscled body Steve saw a moment before. He actually finds himself disappointed that the suit hides most of Bucky's prosthetic arm, though a faint glow is visible at his left cuff. Bucky wears the arm confidently, and something about it fits with the rest of him, giving his whole profile balance and wholeness that's now hidden under the coat. Still, Bucky is striking. Steve knows it's not lust speaking -- or at least not  _ just _ lust speaking. He could seriously be a model. 

Bucky holds the black tie out. "I don't know how to do this."

"I'll get it." Steve comes up to take it from Bucky, shaking his head minutely to clear it. Their hands brush. Steve loops the tail of the tie under Bucky's collar, his forearms resting lightly on Bucky's shoulders, and he's close enough to him to feel Bucky exhale. He carefully ties the knot, avoiding Bucky's eyes, definitely blushing now. Finally he eases the knot up to the top button of the shirt, careful not to make it too tight.

"Thanks," Bucky says, sounding completely unaffected, and Steve luckily has the presence of mind to step back once he's done, putting a respectful distance between them. He finishes buttoning the waistcoat.  "Does it look alright?"

"Buck, it looks..." Steve lets out a long breath, hoping desperately that the intensity of his emotions isn't showing on his face right now. He rubs his jaw with one hand. "It's more than alright. You look fantastic."

Bucky gives him a little smile, and sweeps his hair up and back behind his head with both hands. "Maybe we can tie this back for the dinner."

The image of Bucky in a French braid flashes through Steve's mind before he can stop it, and he bites back a frustrated groan. 

 

* * *

 

"I had a nice time," Bucky says, walking back to the car carrying the suit. He says it hesitantly, trying out the words. Steve beams.

"Me too." 

Bucky is surprised that he doesn't have to lie about it. It was overwhelming to have that much focus on his body; it made him hyperaware of his scar and prosthetic, and of course there was the incident with the kitchen knife that he knows Steve is going to bring up any moment now. But having Steve there made the whole thing bearable. Their relationship is rapidly shifting, becoming less focused on the terms of their contract and more a continual give-and-take, sort of like what Bucky imagines friendship is supposed to feel like.

He thinks he likes it.

 

* * *

 

"Buck, hang on." Steve calls him back as he heads towards his room after they get home for the fitting. Bucky turns around and meets Steve in the sitting room. Steve is holding out the knife to him, handle-first, which Bucky supposes is a good thing. But he looks unhappy.

"You said you weren't mad," Bucky says quickly, as if this will somehow keep Steve from getting mad about it now.

"I know, and I'm not. But Bucky... if you need something like this, you have to tell me. You could have gotten hurt without a real sheath for this thing."

"I heal fast."

"That's not the point. You shouldn't have to have makeshift stuff like this at all. I had no idea you wanted to carry weapons, and I'm fine with it if that's what you want. I just don't want you to hide stuff like this from me. If you're ever afraid, if you need anything to make you feel more secure, tell me so we can find a safe way to do it." He hesitates for a second, then holds the knife out hilt-first to Bucky. "I'll see if SHIELD can issue you a good tactical knife as a backup for the one in your arm. You can keep this until then, but put it back in the knife block when you're done with it."

Bucky looks up at Steve, bewildered. This whole time he has figured Steve is probably afraid of him. Bucky is an assassin. Steve is, much of the time, an office worker. They're both augmented, so Steve doesn't have that advantage over him, either. He should be afraid of Bucky, but he's handing him a knife,  _ another  _ knife, besides the one in his arm.

Steve must either be very stupid or very trusting.

Bucky takes the knife and disappears with it, deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth.


	9. Two steps forward, one step back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't want to admit it to Steve, but he wants his handler back so badly right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just wouldn't be fair if things went well two chapters in a row, now would it?!
> 
> Yeah, this is totally self-indulgent h/c. More plot next chapter lol.
> 
> Warnings: there's a scene where a character vomits.

One evening Bucky hears Steve come home from work, but Steve doesn't come to where Bucky is making burritos to say hello to him and ask him about his day like he always does. Bucky goes to find him.

Steve turns out to be in the living room, face-down on a couch. He's breathing and at a first glance doesn't appear to be injured, but the backpack he takes to work is haphazardly thrown to the ground a few feet away, and his shoes are still on. Steve always puts his work stuff away as soon as he comes home, and he doesn't wear shoes in the house. The whole situation is disturbing.

"Steve?" Bucky says softly to announce his presence.

Steve lets out a long sigh. His face is buried in his arm, and his voice is muffled when he says, "It's fine, Buck. I'll be in for food in a minute."

"You're okay? Not hurt?"

"Just tired. It's been a long day." He pauses like he has to gather energy before saying any more. "Smells good."

"It's burritos." Bucky walks up to Steve's feet, making sure to make a lot of noise so he doesn't startle him. Then he tentatively reaches for one of Steve's shoes. The angle is weird, but he reaches around and unties it. When Steve doesn't move or react, Bucky slips it off his foot and set is carefully down beside the couch. For some reason, he can feel his heart rate pick up, just a hair. He likes doing things for Steve -- doing something without being asked, something sort of intimate (he is, technically, undressing Steve) feels especially nice. Maybe this is why Steve likes to rub his shoulders so much.

He unties and removes Steve's other shoe, then pauses. Steve moves one of his arms away from his face and Bucky can see the tense furrow of his eyebrows above his closed eyes.

Bucky brings his hands up and starts to gently rub one of Steve's feet.

It's strange to be on the giving end of this treatment. One of Bucky's handlers, not the most recent woman but the one before that, liked to beat him about the feet, liked to see him limp around, and he would sometimes press on Bucky's feet afterwards with his thumbs. The deep pressure would be excruciating. Bucky still has scars from that treatment, and thick calluses that cover the soles of his feet.

However, he knows from watching TV that other people like having their feet rubbed. He pays close attention in case he hurts Steve, but he seems to be enjoying it, if the little satisfied sounds and deep sighs are anything to go by. Bucky massages the whole sole of his foot and each of his toes before moving to Steve's other foot.

When he finishes, Steve turns over and finally opens his eyes. Bucky's heart jumps.

"I should tell you," Steve says. "Tony found a bug on my computer today. Some sort of keylogger. He caught it before it could send any data, but he said it had hallmarks of Hydra software." Steve looks away before saying, "My team thinks it might have something to do with you, because I was the only one bugged. Natasha was involved in the negotiations when SHIELD... bought you, and she said that her impression was that Hydra thought you wouldn't be very useful to us. Maybe they didn't realize the memory suppression wouldn't be permanent. Or maybe they thought SHIELD would use electroshock on you also and they realized that you couldn't take much more of it, even with the serum. Either way, they miscalculated. Nat thinks they might have realized you could be an excellent strategic asset for SHIELD. They might be planning action to get you back to Hydra, or to... to neutralize you so nobody can have you." He looks at Bucky seriously. "It's all speculation, Buck. I don't want you to be worried. And you know that if Hydra comes after you, myself, my whole team, hell, all of SHIELD, has your back. Nobody wants you dead or in Hydra's hands."

"Okay," Bucky says easily. Steve seems upset by this, but it makes sense to Bucky. Hydra sold him thinking that he was damaged goods. And he sort of is, but he also remembers more and more about Hydra. They gave him away thinking he would be a total amnesiac, probably realizing that the electroshock and cryo were taking an increasing toll on his body. Now that Bucky's a little more clearheaded, he recognizes in retrospect that his performance was slipping before Hydra sold him. He was getting sloppy; he was constantly brainfogged and relied on his instincts to make hits because he was starting to lose his ability to improvise tactics on the fly. He needed clear, direct orders to work for the. Hydra probably thought he would continue to go downhill, and realized he'd be unmanageable without the memory suppression.

They didn't count on SHIELD and the serum giving him a chance to actually recover. And now that they see what's happening, they're regretting the trade and they want to renege on it. If they have spies on him -- and now that he's thinking about it, they likely have at least one or two -- they also probably realize that his involvement with SHIELD is increasing. They certainly know he's spending a lot of time with Steve.

Bucky is going to have to stay vigilant. If Hydra comes after him, that's one thing, but he doesn't want Steve to get caught up in all this.

"Also," Steve says, "I'm going to need to go out of town for a few days."

"Out of town?"

"I know, it's bad timing. I wish I could stay here in case Hydra tries anything. We don't have any evidence they're ramping up to a specific action, but still. They usually don't even try malware attacks because they know Tony will take them apart in no time, so they're breaking their usual patterns. Anyway, this is unrelated. It's a business trip -- SHIELD is in trouble with the UN, again. Fury wants me to come and look innocent." Steve rolls his eyes. "The UN isn't a huge fan of our dealings with defected spies, even ones from fascist regimes, so we have to go and posture in front of them for a few hours every once in a while to convince them of our good intentions. I hate it." When Bucky gives him a scandalized look at the uncharacteristically harsh language, Steve adds, "I get why we have to do it. It's just... dissimulation is really Fury's wheelhouse. Not mine."

"That sounds enervating." Sam is teaching Bucky active listening skills.

"Yeah, it is." Steve sighs yet again. "Anyway, it's just a couple of days. I leave Tuesday, and I'll be back sometime Thursday evening. I'll get groceries before I go so you won't have to leave the house unguarded, if that helps at all. Maybe ask Nat to check in, or Tony to keep an eye on the place. I'm sorry about the bad timing, with the Hydra stuff. Hopefully it's a false alarm."

"It's fine. I'll be alright." Bucky can handle a few days on his own, with or without Hydra.

* * *

 

 

Then of course it all goes downhill rather rapidly. Bucky's not sure why he's surprised with himself when it does. This entire stupid job has been one step forward, two steps back. He should have known that something awful was coming when he had a great day with Steve at the tailor's, and nothing went wrong, and he didn't have a single flashback. That was just way too good to last. 

Bucky had said all the right things when Steve left. He told him he would miss him and was happy to find he didn't have to fabricate the sentiment, at least not much. He's genuinely come to like having Steve around. The first day had gone great. It was weird to be in Steve's apartment alone -- Bucky was used to Steve's constant presence, a low-level buzz of activity around the house. He'd hear the tiny noises of Steve shifting as he worked in his office, or he'd hear him typing on his state-of-the-art mechanical keyboard. Or Steve would be paging through a book in the reading nook in the library; Bucky would wander by the doorway so he could look in and catch a glimpse of the evening sun shining through Steve's hair from the big bay window and lighting up his face with a radiant glow. Or Steve would be playing piano. 

And he would always have small favors to request from Bucky, making him useful and keeping him from being unoccupied, which always made his nerves worse.

But Bucky found things to do nevertheless. He cooked food for just himself, deep-cleaned the kitchen as he does once a week or so, dusted the entire house; he even found floor polish and went over the hardwood in the library. 

He spent the next day watching movies, listening to music, and reading. He even went on a long wander through the park by Steve's house in the cold and was only a little bit on edge. It took him until Thursday to fuck up.

The day Bucky had accidentally broken a shelf in the library (fixed now; there had been a loose bot that caused it to come down), he had been reaching for a book, one about the assassination of Howard Stark. Bucky was pretty sure that was his work -- the assassination, not the book -- and some kind of morbid curiosity compelled him to read the account of it, to see what they had gotten wrong. It hadn't been his best work; the authorities had known it was a hit almost immediately. To be fair, Bucky was never as good or as smart in close combat as he was from a distance. 

Steve had put the book back on the shelf when he had fixed it, so Bucky hadn't gotten to read it. He felt that it was implicitly off-limits and hadn't tried to take it. Mid-morning on Thursday, Bucky hadn't been able to take the curiosity any longer. 

He opened the front cover of the book while standing on the same stepstool he had used when he knocked the shelf down, and before he could even really start the book, it came back to him instantly. There was a grainy security-camera still reproduced on one of the first pages, showing himself straddling a motorcycle, pulling up to Howard's car, which was crashed at the side of the road. Bucky had knocked them to the curb with the cycle and then killed them both. 

And now he worked for Stark. Who presumably knew about all this. Bucky didn't want to know what the man thought of it. 

When the flashback faded he found himself on the floor by the stepladder. He didn't remember falling, but he was bruised all down his side, from his left shoulder socket to his knee. He rolled onto his back, exhausted as he always was after a flashback, and bothered by the knowledge that he had killed Stark's father. He couldn't remember why, exactly, Hydra had put the hit out; maybe he hadn't even been told. 

It hurt, knowing there was this person inside him, in his past, who had killed unquestioningly, without reason. If Hydra got their hands on him again, would he go back to it? It wasn't that he was against murder on principle, not exactly, but some of the people he had assassinated had to have been innocent. He knew he could run in circles with this all afternoon. How could Steve be friends with him knowing he was a killer? Why was he allowing himself to go soft and to stop thinking of violence as part of the normal cycle of life? Why was SHIELD interested in him when he had killed some of their greater allies? He could never escape his past, couldn't escape constantly thinking about it, and he knew it was selfish to think this way, but it  _ exhausted _ him. 

Also, Steve was going to be home in just a few hours, and Bucky didn't want to be preoccupied when he showed up.

That was when Bucky had gotten the brilliant idea about the cooking wine. 

Hydra had liked to use psychogenic drugs with him. Sometimes to keep him calm, sometimes to test their effects on his serum-modified metabolism, sometimes apparently just because they were bored. The only thing Steve had around was alcohol, and not even much of that. But Bucky did know it was a depressant. If he wanted to be calm and steady for Steve, depressing his nervous system just a little bit could help. He knew since he had received the serum his metabolism was different, though he couldn't remember the details. Steve's was so fast it was impossible for him to get drunk, he had confided to Bucky once in explaining why he only had cooking wine on hand. But Bucky was pretty sure his wasn't quite so fast. He was still affected by high doses of standard painkillers, and Hydra of course had found many substances to which he reacted.

He could probably still get drunk if he moved fast. There was only one way to find out, at any rate.

And he did. He took the two bottles of wine over to the couch and singlemindedly concentrated on finishing them. And now they're finished, and he actually thinks he's still pretty frustratingly sober and his experiment hasn't done anything at all until he goes to stand and it takes him two tries to keep his feet under him.

Which is when a hazy recollection floats back to him: his enhanced metabolism mutes the effects of some drugs, flushing them out of his system before he can get a chance to react to them, but enhances the effects of others. He can't remember for shit if alcohol is the former or the latter, but the way he feels, he's definitely betting on latter.

_ Shit _ . 

And now he's pretty sure this was a monumentally stupid idea, because Steve has never drugged him before. From what he's seen of Steve's world, in this corner of the Earth, recreationally poisoning someone out of boredom is not common. It's occurring to him, a little bit too late, that this is almost definitely some kind of reaction to what Hydra used to do to him -- that he probably sees this as an acceptable solution to problems even though it's not, like when Sam told him that most people didn't use self-inflicted pain to help them focus and gave a laundry list of reasons why. He  _ probably _ should have generalized that lesson to self-inflicted intoxication. Probably. Almost definitely.

He's got the two bottles in his hand and is weaving towards the kitchen to recycle them before Steve can figure out what's happened, increasingly unamused by his inability to walk in a straight line, when he hears a knock at the door.

It's too early to be Steve. Instantly his heart goes into double time. Is it Hydra, coming for him? He recognizes the irony, that he should be incapacitated by one of the habits they instilled into him when they come knocking at the door, but it's not really funny. Still unsteady, he pops the tactical knife out of his arm, realizing he doesn't have a backup, that the paring knife is in his bedroom and the knife block is in the kitchen, but he doesn't have time to reach either of them, so, leaning on a wall, he at least stumbles into a tactically acceptable position by the front door.

Just before he's where he wants to be, he hears the clicking of a key (or a lockpick?) in the keyhole and the lock pops open. He lifts the knife, ready to strike.

Romanov walks into the room.

Before he can make a noise, her gaze whips up to his hand gripping the knife. He feels a sharp pain at his wrists and then somehow he's on his back staring up at her, pinned into place by her shoe. He's breathing hard, and she seems to be hardly breathing, completely unfazed by the situation in the most Romanov-like way possible. The knife is in her hand now, held out of his reach. She's disarmed him. He actually recognizes the tactic she used; he was taught it by his melee instructor but never mastered it or learned to counter it. More irony.

The ceiling is spinning above him; it's hard to focus on her face. He's almost far gone enough to find this whole situation funny, but just aware enough to realize that it's distinctly not funny, it's not funny at all, and his urge to laugh is idiotic and completely inappropriate. He probably scared her. Adrenalin courses through him. He hates being disarmed, but can't bring himself to care that much right now, not when Romanov is glaring down at him like that.

"Why're you here?" he asks her.

"I came to check on you since Steve's not supposed to be getting back for another few hours. He told me to stop in; I was busy until now, so I came by. Looks like it was a good call. Cooking wine? Really?" How can she even tell it was cooking wine? He grimaces. "What exactly made you think this was a good idea?"

"I don't know," he mutters. "Hydra used to drug me, when I was agitated. I was having flashbacks... I thought it would be better for Steve if I was calm when he got home..."

"Jesus."

"I know. I'm sorry. People don't do this." He runs a hand over his eyes, angry with himself for falling into another one of the traps Hydra has left in his mind.

"Come on." She taps his shoulder. "Get up." She helps him stumble to his feet, which makes the dizziness about ten times wore.

Seeing as he's already trashed his dignity completely and then stomped on whatever shreds remained of it and thrown them out the back door, when he suddenly starts feeling very, very nauseated, he tells her, "I think 'm gonna vomit."

"Shit." He's never heard her curse before, and his eyes widen. "Come on, come on. Move." She hustles him down the hallway into the master bath -- Steve's bathroom -- which is bigger than his and has room for both of them. He catches the scent of Steve's soap, something like sandalwood, and grimaces as his stomach turns. Romanov guides him down in front of the toilet, surprisingly gentle. She pulls his hair back for him and holds it up, but he shakes his head minutely. "Not yet," he gets out. He doesn't feel good, not at all, but he can tell he still has a minute before he'll have to let it out, and he could hold it back even longer if he wanted to. 

Hydra had used to test his limits with drugs, to pump them into him until he couldn't take anymore. He learned, intimately, all the feelings of his body rebelling, knows how he'll feel five minutes, five seconds, or an instant before he throws up.

He tries to resume some semblance of order about his person, tucking his legs under him and pushing his hair more securely behind his ears. 

"You can't do this when you're on the job, you know," she starts. "The drinking. It's part of your contract that you have to be sober while you're working."

"I know that," he mutters. It's harder not to throw up when he's talking. "Steve's gone. 'M not on the job. Anyway, I didn't really think I could actually get drunk."

"Well, I wouldn't recommend it even if you can. As far as coping mechanisms go, it's pretty ineffective." 

He thinks about protesting, but he guesses she's right that it was a shitty attempt at finding a coping mechanism. He wanted to escape the feeling of his skin crawling from the flashback, the jumpiness and fearful reticence that comes over him after he has one, without actually working through it and dealing with his feelings like Sam is teaching him to do. 

How selfish of him. He's disgusted with himself.

"You're a smart man, Barnes. You've made some mistakes, but I know you're going to find a better way to cope with civilian life than this."

"I'm never gonna be a civilian," Barnes says, and the last word turns into a bit of a gasp as his stomach clenches. He jerks up over the toilet just in time to vomit. His whole abdomen cramps painfully as he chokes it up. Once he's started vomiting, everything gets much worse. His heart is pounding, he's sweating, blood is rushing in his ears, and the last time he was this sick he had just been dosed with arsenic and his handler was telling him to suck it up and deal with it. Wild-eyed, he grips the edges of the toilet between heaves, saliva dangling from his lower lip. He spits. From a long way off he hears himself saying he's sorry again to Romanov. She's holding his hair out of the way, now, and he actually feels her cool hand stroking the back of his neck. She braces him gently from behind as he starts to heave again, bringing up pathetic splashes of water and bile.

"You're alright. You're safe. Just try to breathe when you're done." He feels like he's having some sort of weird, screwed up fever dream, except it all makes way too much sense to be unreal.

He manages to get a few breaths before he's again retching, this time mostly dry. She freezes beside him as they both hear the sound of a key in the lock. Bucky would freeze too, if he weren't retching. He tries to do it more quietly, a trick he learned with Hydra. No reason to call attention to himself.

"Must be Steve," Romanov says. "He's early. Will you choke to death if I leave you here for a moment?"

He can't speak yet, but shakes his head no, and Romanov gets up and goes to the door. Pretty shortly after that he's able to stop puking. His stomach hurts and his head is pounding and he thinks he's already veering towards being sober. He braces himself against the edge of the bathtub as he eases himself back to lean against the wall. He rests his head on the cool tile behind him, exhausted and still a little nauseated. He's not quite sure how he could have been this stupid. As if he didn't have enough issues he has no control over, he had to create a new problem that could easily have been avoided. In his defense, his handler had liked him better when he was weak and in pain like this.

He hears Romanov and Rogers talking quietly to each other outside the bathroom door. Steve is saying something about his flight getting in early, and then Romanov is telling him, "He's in there, but don't say I didn't warn you. I'll get the Advil."

"Aw, Buck," Steve says to him sadly from the doorway when Bucky turns his head to look at him. The nickname makes him feel warm, even though he also still feels like shit. Steve, from this angle, takes on the proportion of an oversized Greek statue: gargantuan, gorgeous, broad-shouldered...

"'M sorry," he groans. "I'm real sorry, Steve." The apology is sincere, not just mindless begging like he used to do with Hydra. The shame hits him all at once. He doesn't like to disappoint Steve. Bucky really, really fucking likes Steve, more than he's ever realized before, and he has to try really hard not to cry because now that Steve's in the room he realized how anxious he had been for Steve to come home, how much he had wanted to greet him in literally any situation other than this one. 

"Let me..." Steve starts awkwardly. The tap runs for a moment as Bucky's eyes drift closed again, but they snap open when he feels the touch of a cool cloth on his face as Steve cleans him up.

"Y' don't have to, Stevie..." The endearment slips out before Bucky can stop himself. "Don't... I'm just..." He tries different sentence fragments, everything all too jumbled up in his brain to make any sense.

"It's alright," Steve says. His voice is low in Bucky's ear, and he shudders. "Just relax. You're not working right now. I'm doing this as your friend, not your boss."

"I don't have friends," Bucky says.

"That's not true," Steve says sternly. "Don't talk like that. You have me and Nat."

As if on cue, she appears in the doorway and hands off the Advil to Steve. "I calculated that for his metabolism," she says seriously. "Don't give him any more than that. And not until the alcohol is out of his system, just to be safe. I'm heading out. You can handle him?"

"I'm fine," Bucky says, at the same time as Steve says, "Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Nat."

"Anytime. But preferably not within the next six months," she says dryly, and takes her leave.

Steve hovers awkwardly off to the side. The poor guy doesn't even know what to do with this godawful situation. Well, sucks for him. Bucky doesn't know how to fix this either. All he's good for is cleaning and killing. If Steve wants Bucky to get up and clean the bathroom, or to murder someone, sure. He'll get it done. Anything else, tough fucking luck.

Actually, his bathroom-cleaning skills might be convenient right about now.

"Can I get you anything? Water?" Steve asks.

"It's okay, Steve. I'm alright."

"Bucky, I hate to say it, but you really don't look alright right now."

Bucky turns and buries his face in Steve's shirt. For a while everything is quiet. Steve tentatively puts his hands on Bucky's arms as he shudders, almost like he's crying, but it's dry; no tears will come. His head hurts and his knees feel weak. If someone wanted to kill him right now, they could just come up behind him and put a knife right between his ribs, and Bucky wouldn't do anything about it, and the most fucked up part about it all is that Bucky isn't even  _ worried _ about that because Steve is putting his arms around him, stroking his back gently; Steve would protect him, and he's safe, but he's actually _ not  _ safe because whenever he's safe and things seem like they're okay, it turns out to be a lie. He starts trying to explain himself, but nothing he's saying makes any sense. "I try so hard, Stevie... I'm tryin'... But it was so different with Hydra... and I don't know what I'm doing without them half the time... I... it's just so hard, and it hurts..."

"What hurts, Buck?"

"Everything," he moans, "Thinkin' hurts, remembering hurts..." and Steve's hands rub his back gently. Steve keeps telling him that he's alright and he's safe and Steve's got him and he's okay, and it makes him feel horrible and wonderful at the same time, his stomach swooping from residual nausea and  _ feelings _ , and he just needs this nightmare to end immediately. Let him wake up back with Hydra for all he cares, as long as this is  _ over _ .

"Breathe, Bucky. Hey. Come on. Stay with me. Take a deep breath."

He takes a stuttering breath in and coughs as he lets it out, and finally he manages to say, "Steve, I need you to... I need..." He trails off, not sure if he's allowed to say it.

"What, Buck?"

"Tell me what to do," he says quietly.

"Bucky, I've told you it's not --"

"I know all the consent stuff. That's not... I know you want me to be able to make my own decisions... but I don't know what to do. I need you to help me," Bucky admits, almost in a whisper. "I don't want to be in control right now. I... I'm asking you to do this." He inhales. "Please."

He doesn't want to admit it to Steve, but he wants his handler back so badly right now.

A lot of the time Bucky is happy for the freedom Steve gives him. A big part of him still doesn't understand why Steve seems to want to act like Bucky isn't his subordinate. But it's useful not to be locked into a little room when he's not needed. He's been able to learn new skills around Steve's house and on the tablet in his free time. He likes being able to make small decisions like watching something on TV or choosing what's for dinner. And he likes knowing that Steve trusts him enough not to give him hyperspecific orders like Hydra used to do. Instead of telling Bucky what to cook, and when to have it ready, Steve just says "Hey, could you make dinner tonight?" and leaves the rest up to Bucky. He's proud that Steve thinks him competent enough to handle tasks like this.

But right now Bucky just feels lost, and he misses the certainty and structure his handler used to give him. He never had to worry about anything except the orders right in front of him. Sure, his handler scared the shit out of him. She was an effective boss; she punished him harshly and frequently when he would screw up, until he learned to do better. Even so, the very regularity of the punishment made it reassuring.

It's been so long since Bucky felt that certainty, and he  _ needs _ it right now. Not forever. Tomorrow morning he'll let Steve go back to the pattern he's used to with Bucky, where Bucky figures out what orders to execute on his own based on Steve's more lenient instruction. But right now he wants an order he can execute. He needs to get back on track, to shake off the sick haze hanging over him.

Steve is silent for a long time, though, and Bucky is starting to wonder if he's miscalculated their relationship, if Steve won't be willing to do this for him, if Steve is thinking maybe he should pawn Bucky off on some other SHIELD agent instead, by the time Steve says gently, "Sit here for a second, and shut your eyes. I'll be right back."

Bucky exhales loudly and tips himself back against the tiled wall and closes his eyes.

The calm that comes over him is immediate. Steve leaves the room. Bucky doesn't know where Steve is or what he's doing, and he doesn't care. He doesn't need to know, doesn't need to guess what Steve wants or what he is supposed to do.

Bucky lets go.

Some amount of time passes; then Steve comes back. "Here." He gently pushes something into Bucky's hand, and Bucky takes it. "Rinse out your mouth. Then if you can keep a few sips down I'll give you the Advil."

Bucky does, and Steve has him take the pills. He pushes Bucky's sweaty hair out of his eyes since Bucky isn't making any moves to do it himself. "If you're up to it, you should shower before you go to bed. Do you feel dizzy at all?"

"No."

"Then turn on the water. Warm, not too hot."

He starts to strip and Steve blushes, beginning to protest, then seems to think better of it. He leaves his clothes in a pile on the ground and rinses himself off, then comes out of the shower and towels his hair off. Then he waits for the next task, still naked and dripping. He feels quiet and calm on the inside, maybe more than he's felt in days, if not weeks. He can see Steve standing in front of him, and he looks far off while also in perfect focus, the center of Bucky's attention. 

"Hand me the towel and put your clothes back on."

Bucky does. "Good," Steve says softly. Bucky's stomach swoops with happiness. He has  _ missed _ this, being handled like he used to be when he was with Hydra. Except his handler was hard and exacting about his behavior, criticizing every little thing he did. His handler would never have told him he was good. Steve... Steve is different. He makes Bucky feel warm inside. It scares him a little, sometimes, how much he likes it. How much he wants Steve to be with him, guiding him. "Are you going to throw up again?"

"No." He's certain now that he's done.

"Then let's get you to bed." Steve walks him back to his bedroom and waits for him to get under the covers. "Sure you're feeling okay?"

 

"I'm fine. 'M sorry about tonight," Bucky says. And he is, but he calmly accepts the possibility that Steve might punish him anyway.

But Steve doesn't go there. "Don't worry about that right now. We can talk about it in the morning. It's alright."

"It's not."

"Yes, it is. Nobody's hurt. Nothing's broken. No harm done. Go to sleep."

Bucky capitulates. He's nearly unconscious when he hears Steve return to the room and set another cup of water on the bedside table, ostensibly for when he wakes up. "Thanks for being so patient with me," Bucky says, remembering something Sam suggested about thanking people instead of apologizing.

He thinks Steve responds, but he's too tired to be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always liked the idea of supersoldiers' metabolisms being totally unpredictable and amplifying the effects of certain drugs while suppressing the effects of others. I've seen a scientific basis for this before, though I can't find the source now and it might just have been speculation.
> 
> Summary: A keylogger is found on Steve's computer at work that might have something to do with Bucky. Steve goes out of town on a business trip and Bucky gets drunk to try to deal with his anxiety while he's gone, but accidentally goes too far and makes himself sick. Natasha finds him and passes him off to Steve, who takes care of him and puts him to bed.


	10. Business As Usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hydra shows up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Some canon-typical violence/death (not of named characters) in this chapter; not horribly graphic.

When Bucky wakes up the next morning, the first thing he feels is a powerful, sour wave of regret as he remembers the events of last night. 

_ Fuck. _

First the whole drinking debacle, and then he actually asked Steve to handle him as if Bucky had any right asking Steve to change the way he runs his own house.

His memories of the evening are indistinct, not that his memory is that great at the best of times. He remembers Steve taking control and giving Bucky orders, and he remembers staring at Steve and completely letting his guard down, feeling this unbelievable flame of love, awe, and desire flare up in him, all his feelings about his handler tangled up with his feelings about Steve, and all he can think is  _ God I hope Steve couldn't see that written all over my face, _ but he probably could.

He won't let it happen again. He and Steve will go back to their usual casual, easy way with each other, and hopefully Steve won't ever bring up the events of last night again after their inevitable debrief today.

 

* * *

 

"To start with, I should have had Nat come by once a day. I told her to stop in when she had the chance, but SHIELD had her running all over the place and she didn't have time."

"I'm not a child, Steve," Bucky rebuts. The two are eating breakfast in the kitchen together. Bucky is enormously relieved that Steve is home, and scared of what that means for himself. Has he forgotten how to live without Steve? Should that scare him? He still doesn't know what to make of how he asked Steve to take control last night, or of Steve's acceptance, or of how much he  _ liked _ it, more than he ever enjoyed being ordered around by his handler. "I should be able to be home alone for a few days."

"I know, but it's not that. I mean, I trust you. But you don't know anyone in this neighborhood. You just moved in here a few weeks ago. And you were a prisoner of war a few months ago. You should have someone around just in case you need anything, even if you're fine on your own." Bucky flinches at being called a POW. He doesn't like to think about his time with Hydra that way. It makes him sound like a victim.  _ I was a contractor. It was just a job. _

"You don't have to explain. The whole thing was my fault."

"You were just trying to solve a problem, Bucky. Don't beat yourself up about it. You didn't know the alcohol would affect you that way."

Bucky makes a dismissive  _ tch _ noise through his teeth. He's still uncomfortable with how casual Steve acts around him and can't bring himself to directly contradict anything Steve says, but he expresses his opinions in subtler ways, like this. Steve always seems to pick up on what he means.

"But don't do that again, okay?" Steve adds. He lays his hand across Bucky's wrist and grips it gently. "I prefer you stay sober enough to be functional. And... have you thought of talking to a therapist about this?"

"I'm seeing one."

"Good. Good, I'm glad." Bucky looks away, embarrassed.

 

* * *

 

Steve at first is a little wary of Bucky after the business trip, not sure whether the setback will have long-term implications, but Bucky actually seems alright. The next day he resumes his friendliness and warmth towards Steve -- well, relative friendliness, compared to how standoffish Bucky was when they first met -- right away. At first he seems a little stiff, but that fades over the course of the day. Steve worries that it's some kind of a front, because clearly there's some kind of trauma lurking below the surface. However psychologically well-adjusted Bucky might have been before the war, anyone would come out of the experience he went through with Hydra changed.

But as the days go by, Steve starts to relax again. As far as he can tell, Bucky's warmth is sincere. Steve really wants to make friends with him, not only because of Bucky's year-long contract (he'll have to live with him for another 8 months at least unless truly extenuating circumstances arise) but because what he's seen of Bucky is very intriguing. It's clear that Bucky is smart as a whip. He often comments on the work Steve does for SHIELD; once Steve shared some building floor-plans with Bucky and Bucky immediately came up with a list of seven or eight tactical weaknesses and opportunities inherent in the design of the building that Steve's entire team had failed to notice. Bucky also seems to care about Steve, in his own way. He tolerates Steve's touch and often seems to enjoy it, despite his stoic affect, and he picks up on Steve's unspoken needs and shows Steve he cares in indirect ways, like taking Steve food when he's working hard and forgets to eat. Also, the house is constantly immaculate. Steve doesn't have to worry about accidentally soaking a sock in a puddle of coffee in the kitchen he hasn't had time to clean up. (Before he hired Bucky that only happened to him once or twice. Or six times.)

On Saturday, the two go grocery shopping together and talk the whole time about inconsequential things, and the balance of the conversation is closer to 40-60 in Steve's favor than the 5-95 they used to have, when Bucky would contribute only the occasional grunt or singleworld response. He comments at length on the death of the Gros-Michel banana and the rise of the red delicious apple. Steve is delighted by Bucky's volubility. He can't stop smiling, and Bucky seems like he's responding to the positive feedback by opening up more, and despite the terrible start they both had to the week, the jet-lag from the business trip and Bucky scaring the shit out of him with his breakdown when Steve came home, the  _ last _ few days of the week are some of the best Steve's had in a long time.

* * *

Bucky wouldn't have noticed the signs of someone lurking around the house if he hadn't been taught by Hydra to recognize them.

Something has broken several twigs on one of the bushes right outside Steve's front door. Bucky isn't looking for them when he notices them. He's just gazing out the glass door one evening, lost in memories of his earlier life, while Steve shucks off his shoes in the foyer, when he feels a sense of  _ wrongness _ , the weird feeling one might get when walking into a room from which a piece of furniture has unexpectedly been removed. His eyes are drawn to the overgrown bush. Steve never brushes by it on his practiced way up the stairs into the house -- in fact, the walkway through the front yard approaches the door from the opposite side, so Steve wouldn't have snapped twigs on it without going out of his way unless he did something pretty uncharacteristic like slamming the front door open. Steve has never trimmed the bush, either, and anyway there are only a few twigs broken, and they're not completely snapped off. A hedge trimmer would have left clean edges and actually separated the twigs into two parts.

Maybe they were broken by the postwoman, a delivery person, or a neighbor's dog running out of control. Maybe.

He excuses himself for a moment, telling Steve he wants to get a little air, and goes out to investigate. The dirt around the bush has recently been disturbed, but carefully raked back into place. Whoever was here wasn't astute enough to match the natural crisscrossing patterns of the substrate where they disturbed it. And there are light marks still visible that might match someone's fingers brushing over the dirt. 

Bucky catches a few fine fibers from clothing, dyed dark brown, clinging to the other side of the bush, only visible when he weaves his head so the sun strikes them straight on. 

Bucky's hackles rise, and he gets up and walks a slow circuit around the house. He doesn't notice anything else except a patch of slightly crushed grass directly under the window of Steve's office. He narrows his eyes. It  _ could _ be a coincidence _. _

But Bucky thinks something else is going on.

One of the neighbors is giving Bucky a weird look from her front porch, so Bucky salutes her loosely and walks back into the house, considering. He doesn't want to tell Steve about it just yet. He shouldn't alarm Steve if the signs turn out to be nothing. He remembers the clause in his contract that states he could serve as Steve's bodyguard in circumstances that necessitate it. Steve hasn't asked him to watch the house or to guard Steve himself, but Bucky decides to do it just in case, to at least keep a close watch tonight and make sure nothing further occurs.

They eat dinner together, Bucky alert but attentive the whole time. Once he sees a small movement outside the kitchen window and fluidly rises from his chair, his stance coiled like a compressed spring. "Buck? What is it?" Steve asks, cutting himself off in the middle of a sentence, but Bucky doesn't say anything. He has stashed one of the knives Steve bought him after the kitchen knife incident in the mechanism that allows the kitchen table to pull apart to accommodate an extra leaf, in easy reach from his position at the table. He reaches toward it now, listening intensely. But after a silent moment nothing has happened, and he sees nothing outside the window. He weighs options in his mind, the likelihood that someone is planning to break in versus the likelihood that he'll freak Steve out if he goes outside to check. If Steve panics or removes them to the Tower, a better-guarded location, Bucky could lose his chance to actually catch whoever is prowling around outside, and the situation will be left unresolved.

In the end, he sits back down at the table. "Nothing. I thought I saw something outside, but I didn't. What were you saying about Peggy?" Steve gives him a curious look, but continues his anecdote. 

* * *

They watch a movie on the couch together at Steve's request, and then Steve goes to practice piano as the night deepens outside the house. Bucky is unsettled. He can't see anything outside the windows anymore through the glare from the indoor lights, and he's still not entirely sure if there really is someone lurking outside the house. When he was working for Hydra, he would have erred on the side of caution -- locked himself into a room of the house to minimize points of entrance and waited in sniper stillness until whoever it was had either revealed themselves or enough time had passed that he could be sure there was no threat. Steve complicates the situation, though: Bucky doesn't want to ask Steve to come sit with him in a dark room for hours. He's not even sure Steve could stay still and quiet for that long.

So Bucky guards Steve instead. He follows him into the room with the piano, his office, and sits near him in an armchair with his back to the wall while Steve plays. 

He can't relax into the music tonight as he would like to, because he has to stay alert. But he can fake it competently.

Steve smiles at him when he sees that Bucky is going to stay in the room as he practices. Usually Bucky listens from elsewhere in the house.

Finally Steve goes off to his bedroom to sleep. Bucky makes like he's going back to his own suite, then circles back around to Steve's bedroom and listens to him shift around in bed for a few minutes before going silent. His enhanced hearing can actually pick up on the rhythm of Steve's breathing through the door, and he hears it slow and even out. Steve is one of those people who can fall asleep in just a few minutes. Bucky couldn't do that even before the war and Hydra. Now it sometimes takes him hours to fall asleep. He's jealous of Steve's effortless ability to rest.

He leaves Steve's door and walks through every room in the house, clearing them. He grabs a larger knife, almost a dagger, from his room and clips the sheath onto his belt to supplement the combat knife in a strap on his lower leg and goes to sit by Steve's bedroom door to keep watch.

He wishes SHIELD had issued him some guns.

It doesn't take long for him to hear someone start to pick the lock of the back door, very quietly. Probably a professional, by the efficient movements he detects of the pick and torque wrench in the lock. 

Bucky rises fluidly to his feet, pressing up against the wall.

The lock gives way. Whoever is breaking in moves into the house almost silently; he probably wouldn't be able to hear anything if he wasn't enhanced. Definitely operatives of some sort, not just an extremely poorly-judged robbery. There are the footsteps of two individuals, one much taller than the other. He picks up on the pattern that they pace through the back room quickly; they're sweeping the room as though they're trained in clandestine ops, though they probably aren't spies. 

They're moving towards Bucky's hallway. He coils up as they round the corner, catching sight of him for the first time. For a second he twitches to draw a knife, but then decides not to. He'd rather try to bring them down with nonlethal force so Steve doesn't have to deal with dead bodies in his house. 

He's not prepared for the sharp spike of fear that hammers into him as the invaders start towards him. Usually when he was running missions for Hydra the fear would hit him afterwards, as his cold, functional mindset gave way to the disorientation of the memory wiping wearing off and his brain healing himself. While he was sniping he felt nothing; it was when the debriefing was drawing near, where he would inevitably be punished by his handler for anything he had fucked up, that he would start to sweat.

As Bucky is riding the wave of fear, wide-eyed and frozen, the first of the two housebreakers sprints up to him, suddenly a looming shadow in Bucky's vision. The eyes of the other attacker shine at him from the darkness as the first cocks their fist. Bucky manages to catch sight of the knife held in their other hand and twist their wrist to disarm them, but, distracted by the knife, he fails to evade when the hostile punches him in the face. The first blow, quiet but audible in the nearly-silent house, glances off his nose; pain blooms through his skull and he feels blood drip onto his upper lip. The second thuds into his eye socket. Bucky sucks in a breath and finally dodges the attacker's third hit. Tearing up and gasping, he nevertheless reaches out inhumanly fast to grab the larger housebreaker's arm as their fist hurtles past him, using their own momentum to set them off balance. He tackles them down to the ground, bringing them down slowly to keep the fight silent. He unsheathes the claws on his metal arm, feels them snap out, and slits the figure's throat in one efficient movement, hearing the hiss of blood spraying into Steve's carpet. They die quickly, silently. He probably shouldn't have done that, he thinks distantly. He doesn't know how to get blood out of the carpet, and he thinks Steve probably won't be happy about that. He retracts the claws partway and exhales sharply through his nose to clear away the blood.

Bucky's pulse is pounding in his face, in his eye where he was hit. Also, there's a tiny voice in his head screaming  _ Steve! _ at him over and over again, terrified that a third hostile could enter Steve's bedroom via the window by his makeshift art studio while Bucky is out here grappling with these half-competent goons. He has to finish this fight quickly so he can sweep the back of the house.

Bucky steps forward to uppercut the other attacker to finish the fight. He catches them under the chin but it's a glancing blow; a kick lands across his ribs as he steps forward. But there's little room to wind up a kick in the narrow hallway, and it barely moves him. The two grapple, Bucky ceding ground in exchange for keeping the fight quiet, dodging and backing up towards Steve's door for a few seconds. It's long enough for him to catch the rhythm of the fight and the attacker's blows, and finally he manages to crane-kick the other man in the jaw hard enough to knock him out. Bucky catches the body so the sound of it hitting the floor won't wake Steve. He lowers it to the ground, then locks his metal fingers around their throat, choking them out until they're unconscious. With effort, he unlocks his fingers. 

The person on the floor is still alive, at least fo rnow. So one of the threats is neutralized, and there's one left to question. Clearly these people don't want Steve in the equation; they're being as careful as Bucky is not to disturb him. Maybe they planned to drug Steve while he was still sleeping and capture him. Maybe they're not here for Steve. Maybe they've been muzzled like the Winter Soldier used to be, and can't talk. Whatever the case, Bucky is glad for it. He'd prefer Steve not know this is happening until Bucky has won.

As he stands still and listens, he hears more of them outside. The fight isn't over. He circles around to the back door to intercept.

It takes him another ten minutes to clear out five more hostiles outside the house. One of them makes it as far as the hallway outside Steve's bedroom, and Bucky adds another body to the carnage inside. None of the rest of the hostiles make it out alive. A few get a hit in -- a small throwing knife was embedded in Bucky's calf, and he has a thin slash across his back. He yanks the knife out as he goes back inside the house, swipes it off on his shirt absentmindedly, and tucks it into his waistband with the other one.

He clears the perimeter of the house, but he's pretty sure the assault is over now. He kicks over one of the bodies in the hallway and inspects it by the moonlight streaming in through the kitchen. The corpse is wearing a black tac suit, but affixed to the chest is a small badge with a many-headed snake on it. Hydra. 

He goes up to Steve's door and carefully levers it open. Something twisty happens in his insides when he sees Steve peacefully asleep in his twin bed. He's curled on his side, head pillowed on one arm, the even rhythm of his breathing the only sound in the room. How he was able to sleep through that, Bucky doesn't know, but he's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He exhales in relief. Mission success.

He sweeps Steve's room meticulously and ascertains that nobody made it inside, then sheaths his claws the rest of the way. Bucky wipes sweat from his face onto his t-shirt as he goes back to the entryway to wake Steve, knocking lightly on his door.

* * *

 

Steve jerks awake from a restless sleep to Bucky standing in his doorway, silhouetted by moonlight from a window behind him. The sight is ominous; a feeling of  _ wrong _ prickles over him. Bucky's hair is falling in his face, and it's in clumps as if it's damp. Even in the dark Steve can see a sheen of sweat on Bucky's face. His posture is tense; he's crouching slightly, low to the ground, looking way too alert for this time of night. And Steve can hear his harsh breathing, see it lifting his shoulders, from all the way across the room. Something is seriously wrong. "Bucky? Are you alright?"

He nods without saying anything.

"What's going on?"

"They got in." 

Steve waits for an explanation, but none is forthcoming.  "Who, Buck? Did you have a nightmare?"

"No. People broke into the house. It was Hydra. I found a badge on one of their uniforms."

Steve is up and out of his bed in a flash. "Broke in? Hydra broke in here? When? Did they hurt you? Are you okay?" He flicks on the lamp by the bed, provoking Bucky to flinch and then quickly pull the bedroom door shut behind him, but not before Steve catches a glimpse of a figure sprawled on the ground in the hallway. "Oh,  _ shit _ ," he breathes, his heart pounding in triple time. Bucky is smeared with blood; it's on the front of his shirt and drying on his metal hand. He sees the direction of Steve's gaze and looks down at his hands, flesh and metal. His eyebrows twitch. The lower half of his face is practically coated with it, like a mask over his upper lip and jaw. More is running freely from his nose, dripping into his shirt. "You're bleeding."

"Not serious. It's safe now. They're gone." Bucky says emotionlessly, and carelessly wipes blood from his face with his flesh hand, then smears it onto his shirt. The blood on his hand collects in defensive wounds, shallow cuts and scrapes that must sting like hell. "I cleared the house already. I don't think any more are coming. They wanted to be subtle; sent a small team. You should call SHIELD."

"The people outside, are they...?"

Bucky grimaces. "You shouldn't see that. I... made a mess."

"I've seen corpses before."

"I know," Bucky says, but continues to block the doorway. "But you don't need to see them."

"Are they all dead?"

"I killed seven of them. There's one left."

"Still alive?"

"Unconscious and tied up."

Steve hisses out an exhale. "Okay. Then we'll worry about you first. Are you hurt anywhere else?" Steve can tell he's going into overprotective mother bear mode, the way Natasha always complains about on the rare occasions he notices she's sick or tired and he forces her to rest, but he doesn't even care. Seeing that glimpse of a body behind Bucky, knowing Bucky just fought off Hydra hostiles with his bare hands (okay, there were probably knives involved, and he's not sure the metal arm can really be described as a bare hand, but still) while Steve was asleep scares him so badly he could cry. He has to force himself not to shake as he herds Bucky, who cooperates without comment, into the bathroom to check him over. Steve presses him down to sit on the toilet lid and kneels in front of him. "Here. Hold this to your nose."

"You should really call SHIELD," Bucky insists. "I'm still operational." He actually seems remarkably calm. Steve has to remind himself that he spent decades as the Winter Soldier doing exactly this to people who didn't deserve it half as much. In comparison to that, taking out a few Hydra operatives must seem like a cakewalk. 

"Just hang on. I'll call them in a moment. You're my first priority right now. Let me get your shirt off. No, wait." Steve hisses sympathetically when he sees the long, livid stripe of drying blood cut through Bucky's shirt, a deep slice running over his shoulder. He grimaces at the other slash across Bucky's back. Bucky obediently presses the wet washcloth under his nose to stanch the blood still running from it, a rosy flower blooming in the white cloth. He follows Steve's gaze to the slash wound.

"This looks like it needs stitches," Steve says. "Let me put some gauze over it for now."

"I didn't feel that one. Sorry. I was distracted," he admits. "It'll heal if you leave it alone."

"Don't apologize. God, you probably just saved my life." Hesitantly, Steve lays his hand on Bucky's leg. "You did great."

Bucky looks at him and half-smiles, his wide eyes pale grey in the harsh light of the bathroom, turning his face into a stubbly landscape of light and shadow. The light picks out thin scars on Bucky's cheeks and jaw, details of his skin Steve has never noticed before. Steve stares up at Bucky from his position kneeling in front of him, transfixed.

For a second neither of them breathe. 

Then he snaps out of it. "Okay, uh..." He clears his throat. "Let me get your shirt off so I can put something over that slash." He carefully peels the t-shirt up. The handful of slash marks are all relatively superficial, none deeper than about a half-centimeter.  Bucky's ribs on one side are swollen and already starting to bruise light grey. Steve probes them experimentally with his fingertips and winces sympathetically when Bucky jerks, just barely twitching away from Steve's touch.

"Okay, new plan. I'll call SHIELD and Tony's doctors can help patch you up. I think you might have broken ribs."

"They're just bruised. I don't need a doctor. The serum--"

"I know what the serum does. That doesn't mean the best I can do for you is just to let you  _ wait _ for it to do its work. They have painkillers at the tower, and stuff that will make you heal faster. Also, I'd rather not hang around in my own house with a bunch of Hydra corpses lying around."

Bucky seems to consider this.

"I'll get them to take care of the bodies while we're out." Steve adds.

"You wanna interrogate the one that's still alive before we go? I can bring 'em in here..."

"No," Steve chokes out at the image. "I really do not want to do that."

"Too much of a softy to do the dirty work yourself?"

As usual, it takes Steve a second to realize Bucky is joking, looking down at Steve with dancing eyes and smirking behind the washcloth, now thoroughly crimson and dripping pink water, although the blood itself has finally stopped seeping down Bucky's face. He finds humor at the most unexpected times. "Yeah," Steve says, smiling. "I guess so." He pauses. "Are you... okay, mentally?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm... used to this."

The weird thing is, Bucky's clearly not lying. When he's pretending to be calm, he's a little unnaturally still. He's certainly not expressive, though he's usually no less expressive than normal. But right now he's  making eye contact and engaging in conversation. Steve doubts he actually enjoyed the chaos in the house, but he doesn't seem to have been affected by it much. 

_I guess this would seem like business as usual to him_. Steve frowns at the thought. Even after the long weeks of peace they've had together, Bucky doesn't see invaders in their own house as at all surprising. It saddens him. But at least he sees Steve talking to him, helping him clean up, and deciding what to do about the aftermath together as normal, too. At least he eventually woke Steve up for help. 

Steve shakes himself out of his thoughts. He can talk to him about it later, but right now they need to get to the tower and regroup.


	11. Cleanup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky regroup at the tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has kudo'd/commented for your incredible support! I get notifications whenever someone comments on this, and I can't stop smiling whenever I see that someone has taken the time to leave an encouraging message. 
> 
> Content stuff: there's a panic attack/dissociation depicted in this section, having to do with a medical setting. As per usual, summary at the end of the chapter if you want to skip it.

Bucky leads Steve out to the car. They pass the incapacitated hostile and the corpses on the floor in the hall, and Steve catches sight of at least one more corpse in the kitchen. It's a miracle that none of their neighbors have called the police yet, although if Bucky fought quietly enough that Steve didn't wake up, likely none of the neighbors heard anything either. It's still around four in the morning; they're probably asleep.

He tells Bucky to sit down and wait on the front steps while he calls SHIELD to take care of the situation. Bucky cooperates. Steve has noticed how much calmer it makes him when he has direct orders to follow; he doesn't like it, but given that Bucky just killed like a dozen people to protect Steve, he figures even if it's not the healthiest thing in the world, he deserves some peace right now. 

He looks a bit flushed, but he's also shivering slightly. Steve feels his forehead and he's definitely hot. He recognizes the problem: the serum will make Bucky heal much faster than a non-augmented human, but it taxes the body's metabolism to do so. When Steve is healing it feels like coming down with the flu for a few hours. Bucky is probably experiencing the same thing.

He wants to take him out to the car and drive them to the tower immediately where someone can make sure Bucky's okay, but he can't leave the one living hostile here unsupervised in the meantime, so he calls Tony, who of course is still awake and answers the phone immediately.

"Cap, what could you  _ possibly _ need at this hour? Because I'm busy working on a new form of minimally-invasive deep-brain stimulation for Parkinson's patients and I really don't have to advise you on your love life --"

"Hydra came. Bucky took out almost a dozen, but we left one alive. They're in the house, tied up. And we need a doctor." Bucky protests under his breath, but Steve ignores him.

Tony's tone changes completely from his usual facetious drawl to genuine concern. "Fuck. Are you coming to the tower?"

"That's the plan. I'm bringing Bucky."

"Alright, hold tight." Tony demands that Jarvis send a few agents to the house stat in the background. "Just hang on for thirty second. I'm sending people over to handle whatever the fuck is going on with Hydra and to pick up you and loverboy over there."

"Don't call him that, Tony."

"Whatever. I gotta make up a guest bed. Or two. Your pick."

"Shut up. He's right here," Steve says. "Two."

"Yeah, yeah, that's what you say  _ now _ ." Before Steve can protest, Tony hangs up. Steve makes a tiny noise of frustration, but doesn't explain when Bucky cocks his head.

* * *

 

 

An unmarked car picks them up. Steve helps Bucky inside over his mild protests. Steve quiets him with a gruff, "I know you're fine, but I just... you scared me." He stops protesting. On the ride over, he reaches out and grips Steve's hand, staring fixedly out the front window as he oozes blood onto the seat. Now that Steve's over the visceral discomfort of seeing him hurt, he realizes how surprising it is how  _ little  _ Bucky was injured. For one thing, it speaks to his skill as a fighter. Steve didn't watch the fight, but he has to be beyond competent if he could take on a dozen trained Hydra agents on his own and win. But it also suggests Hydra wasn't  _ trying _ to kill him -- if they had been, they probably would have brought guns. It's troubling. Steve isn't sure exactly what they want, but it certainly suggests they have an interest in Bucky, maybe in taking him alive, and Steve does  _ not _ like that.

Natasha greets Steve at the door. Tony must have woken her. She greets Steve with a tight hug and gives Barnes a nod. Despite Bucky's insistence that he's fine, he looks seriously glassy-eyed and responds only with a twitch of his head. "Tony's on the med floor, waiting to disinfect you and get you some of the good drugs. We have some stuff that  _ should _ work with your metabolism." She precedes them into an elevator with all of her usual poise, despite the early hour. On the way up, she asks him, "What do you think they were looking for?"

"Anyone's guess," Steve says. Fatigue is starting to press down on him like a physical weight, and he leans back against the wall of the elevator, but he's too twitchy to actually rest. "Maybe information that I keep in the office at home, paperwork on recent missions..."

"Me," Bucky says. It's not really a question.

Both of their heads whip around to him. Steve frowns. He doesn't want Bucky to take responsibility for the attack. It wasn't his fault. "Maybe," Natasha says after considering for a moment. "They sold you voluntarily, but I think the current situation is not what they expected."

"They thought they had run me into the ground," Bucky says tonelessly. "They thought they had broken me. If they've seen me out with Steve, they know that's not entirely the case. They may suspect I still have combat capabilities. Maybe they wanted to kill me so SHIELD can't have me either. Maybe it was a test to see if my augmentation and training are still active."

There's an uncomfortable silence. Steve rubs Bucky's upper back. He looks exhausted guarding several of his injuries, standing ramrod straight so as not to disturb the slash across his back and tucking his injured shoulder in, although he's trying to hide it, leaning faux-casually on one elbow against the rail around the wall of the elevator. His face is neutral, but Steve has learned to tell when Bucky is keeping it intentionally expressionless -- he loses the tiny microexpressions that usually hide around his eyes. "Did you sleep at all tonight?"

"No."

"Did you know?"

"Know what?"

"Don't play dumb," Steve says, but not harshly. "Did you know there was going to be an attack?"

"I had an idea." He looks down. "I didn't want to scare you if it was nothing. I wanted you to be able to sleep." He turns his face up to Steve, their close proximity exaggerating the slight height difference -- Bucky is a few inches shorter. Steve's heart almost breaks at his puppy-dog apologetic expression.

"You don't have to do that, Buck. We could have gotten SHIELD to run surveillance..." 

The elevator door opens, cutting him off.

* * *

 

When the doors swish open, Bucky meets Tony Stark for the first time.

He's heard of the man, of course. He can recite half his Wikipedia page: primary funder of SHIELD, who operate out of his tower; unmarried, but involved long-term with Virginia Pots, current CEO of Stark Industries. Stark himself is the former CEO of Stark Industries from back when they used to be a weapons manufacturer. In fact, Bucky has neutralized people using Stark's father's supply -- sniper rifles and a couple of heavier-grade tools like missile launchers and grenades. They all worked like a charm, at least if your preferred charm was murder. He thinks he probably should not mention this to Stark.

He's not sure if Stark knows Bucky killed his father or not. He thinks he probably should not mention this to Stark either.

Stark, for his part, focuses his exuberant attention on Romanov and Steve, launching immediately into an explanation of his current lab-work with the Parkinson's patients and the simulated model of the disease he's developing at his holographic workstation, etcetera, etcetera. He looks haggard; Bucky would clock him in at three days of beard growth, and there are dark shadows under his eyes. Probably insomnia with psychiatric etiology, given that Stark has the best doctors in the world literally living in his skyscraper with him. Maybe ADHD, as well, Bucky thinks, which isn't surprising given Stark's reputation as an eccentric genius. Stark is energetic despite his apparent sleeplessness, gesticulating and practically bouncing off the walls as he effuses at Steve and Romanov. Most of the chatter goes over Bucky's head as Stark rattles on about how Steve always seems to end up in risky situations (Bucky files that away for future probing) and explains where the one person Bucky captured alive is being held. Stark expresses that it would have been nice if Bucky had left him more than one person to interrogate. Bucky doesn't dignify the insult with a response, glaring at Stark until Steve awkwardly changes the subject. Nobody told him how many to keep alive. He made a judgment call. 

Stark ushers them all over through a few doorways into a little medical practice. They're lead into an open room lined with cupboards and cabinets, plenty of floor space, a few nurses standing at the ready, a handful of waiting-room chairs arrayed along the walls, and an examination chair in the center of the room.

Bucky dissociates so fast it's like he's literally been flung onto the ceiling.

He's somewhere very far away, all of a sudden, listening to the real world through tinny speakers and watching through the wrong end of a scope. Through a watery veil of unreality he sees Tony take his arm and begin to lead him over to the chair. Bucky's body responds automatically; he seizes into military attention and walks stiffly forward. "Steve," Tony says, "You said your boy had bruised and possibly cracked ribs, the nose might be broken, and..."

"He's not my _boy_ , Tony, for God's sake. He's under contract as a helpmeet, as you very well know."

"This laceration here probably doesn't even need stitches. It's already knitting back together. Anais, what do you think?" He pulls one of the nurses over as he deposits Bucky into the chair with surprising gentleness, even though Tony is barely even looking at Bucky. "We'll probably just check him over and get him some painkillers and call it a day. Not much else we can do beyond what the serum will take care of on its own."

"Are you going to wipe me?" Bucky blurts out. As his own voice reaches him, sounding like it's on a short delay, he hears how much it's slurring with fear and winces. His handlers always liked him to speak precisely. 

"To do what now?" Tony asks.

But he can't speak anymore. He knows what he wants to say, but the words won't come. He's too far gone. Tony quickly loses interest and turns back to the nurse. Bucky braces himself for the debrief. They always debrief him in the chair before they wipe him. And it always hurts. Sometimes more, sometimes less. He hates the anticipation of not knowing what they'll use on him beforehand. He doesn't see a violet wand anywhere, or a cane or baton, but there are cabinets all around the room that could hold all sorts of implements. They could choke him out, waterboard him...

He tries to remember what the mission was, exactly. He was home with Steve, fighting off people around Steve's house, fighting Hydra. He doesn't remember being on a mission. He doesn't remember who owns him. Clearly Steve is his handler, Stark one of the technicians assigned to him, but Bucky seems to remember this not being so just a few minutes ago, which is confusing. He remembers being Steve's helpmeet, actually, which makes  _ no _ sense given the current situation. Maybe Hydra tricked him into believing that was his job as a way of sending him to spy on SHIELD? He can't seem to figure it out.

The weirdest thing about the whole situation is the animal fear pulsing through him. He's shaking and can feel tears sliding towards his temples, and has to force himself to stay still and lay back until the debriefing starts -- he wishes they would strap him down so he doesn't have to concentrate so hard on not moving. 

He fears the punishment -- of course he's never liked being punished -- but he fears the memory wiping more.

It always used to come as a relief, having his memories erased. The crimes he committed, the mistakes he made, his complicated anxieties would all be wiped away in a moment of pain, a minute of convulsions. 

But now there's Steve.

Whatever the truth about his mission is, he remembers the Steve of the past week, or several weeks, or months or years maybe, the Steve he's just starting to understand and  _ see _ , the Steve that's proud of Bucky, the Steve who touches him gently, not like his handler used to with brutal efficiency. He's starting to  _ know _ Steve and Bucky wants to know  _ more _ . He wants the peace and safety of the past few days, this calm, domestic job, to last. 

Unconsciously, he knew that at some point he would have to choose: the helpmeet job, the first stirrings of calm and rest Bucky has felt in seventy years, the attachments he's beginning to build with Natasha, Steve, with his therapist Sam... or the return to his old job, the thing he's best in the world at, the one thrilling peak of competence in his pathetic landscape of skills.

He just didn't realize he would be forced to choose so soon.

It's not his choice, anyway. Steve has apparently decided for him. He tries to make his mind go blank and finds he can't quiet the incessant voices running through it, yelling about Steve. He reaches for his mindset of perfect ambivalence, grasping for it to pull it into place before the pain starts. He needs to be ready when they start to punish him, receptive to what they're teaching him, or they'll turn the pain up and up until he learns the lessons he needs. But the more he tries to shut himself down, the more his hands tremble. 

He's so weak. He's useless. He's failing. He's broken.

Tinnily he hears Tony saying, "Bucky? Earth to Bucky. Hey, Steve. Steve. I think Bucky's having a panic attack."

Time jumps. Steve has his hands on Bucky's shoulder and his face, distorted by a scrim of tears and so beautiful Bucky doesn't think he can look straight at it, is looming in front of him. "Stevie, I don't... I don't know what I did wrong." He knows he should shut up, but he can't fucking help himself. "Just tell me what I messed up and I'll do better. You don't have to wipe me. I'll obey." 

Then Steve's hands are under him, and Steve picks him up, actually lifts him out of the chair before setting him on the ground. It's so unexpected that he quiets down. "Come here, come here. Just hang on for a second. You're safe. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you." Steve is sweeping out of the examination room, Tony and a few of the nurses on their heels, and he takes Bucky back to the bank of elevators. "Jarvis, take us to the twenty-third floor. Fuck, Tony, pick one of the nurses to come with us. We're gonna have to do this somewhere else. You're okay, Bucky; just try to breathe."

Everything except Steve's voice is an incomprehensible swirl of color. Bucky is definitely hyperventilating now, which is bad. He needs to be able to speak clearly to his handler. Also, his handler isn't supposed to be holding him, to carry him. He's supposed to get one of the technicians to do it, or to strap Bucky to a gurney and transport him that way. Also, Bucky can't fucking breathe; his breath is whistling in his throat and he has to suck each breath into his lungs like he's breathing through a coffee stirrer, and he think he's going to die, his lungs are constricting, his throat closing down... "Come on, just breathe with me, Bucky. Try to take a deep breath in." He tries; it sets him coughing. He's not getting enough air. "You're okay. We're in the elevator. We're not going back to the examination room."

"Has he panicked like this before? Anais, can you get a cup of water for us?" 

This is so bad, worse than the time he failed the mission because he missed twice and that was all the ammo his handler had allotted him, worse than --

He's jarred out of his thoughts by Steve pushing him down on something soft, a couch, a blue couch in what looks like a living room. This is new. He's never been on a couch during the debrief before.

He's still dragging in ragged breaths, but now he's getting more air in, it seems. 

He entertains, briefly, the thought that this might not actually be a debrief, but he can't trust it. Better to assume the pain is still coming.

He holds his breath for a second to try to slow his breathing, but it seems to have the opposite effect, exacerbating how oxygen-starved he feels. His panting is starting to catch up to him and his vision begins to grey out. "Steve, 'm gonna pass out," he manages. Steve guides his head down between his legs, leaving his hand resting on Bucky's back.

"You need to breathe, Bucky. Inhale. Take a deep breath."

Bucky reaches out for Steve, clutches at his legs, the hem of his shirt. "That's it, you're doing great, Buck," Steve says as Bucky fists both his hands in Steve's shirt. "Keep trying to take deep breaths. Exhale slowly. All the way. Can you feel the couch you're sitting on? We're in Tony's tower, in one of the guest rooms..."

"Just do it," Bucky demands in a wheeze. "Get it over with."

"There's nothing to get over with. We're not wiping you. SHIELD doesn't do that." 

"Jesus tapdancing Christ," Tony interjects. "That happen often? That was extreme, even by  _ my _ standards. I mean --"

"Tony, shut the hell up," Steve snaps. He's sitting next to Bucky now, rubbing his shoulder and handing him a bottle of water, which Bucky takes without opening it. He closes his eyes and tries to sit up straight. "Nothing's going to happen to you, Bucky. I took you to an examining room with a doctor so someone could take a look at your ribs. We weren't gonna do anything you're not comfortable with. I should have asked you if it would be okay."

"Not gonna wipe me?"

"No, that's Hydra." They sit for a moment.

It seems obvious now that the three of them are in Stark's tower and that the closest Bucky has been to Hydra in the past three months was during the earlier fight. He can't completely let down his guard, not yet, but the panic is ebbing.

"Is that what the room looked like?" Steve asks eventually. "Where they used to --"

"Where they debriefed me," Bucky murmurs. "Shit. I'm so sorry. I don't know --"

"Save it," Steve sighs. "It's been a hell of a long night. For both of us." Steve takes a shuddering breath, and feeling Steve's inhale against his own side -- that's how closely together they're seated on the couch -- anchors Bucky even more firmly in the present. His whole reality shifts to accommodate the fact that he's actually _ not _ back with Hydra and his handler is  _ not _ anywhere near as far as he knows and she's  _ not _ about to torture him again, and he feels very, very stupid about this whole event and is happy to refocus on Steve, who is scared and tired and needs Bucky to hold it together now. "Are you okay if the nurse checks you out now?"

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Just... I don't think I can go back to that room."

"Of course not. We'll do it right here." Steve looks to Tony for approval, and he nods. "Is it okay if I stay here with you?"

"Please," Bucky says. He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then gives the water back to Steve and takes his shirt off.

"Ouch," Tony says with a sympathetic wince. Bucky looks down. His ribs on the right are a little swollen and beginning to bruise in a wash of mottled purple and red. The nurse, Anais, carefully moves in, watching Bucky closely the whole time. She pulls on a pair of gloves and starts by cleaning and butterfly bandaging the shallow gash across his shoulder, which is already starting to knit together with white scar tissue that will soon be replaced with new skin.

"I can do that myself," Bucky protests when he realizes she's just dressing it. "Hydra taught me."

Anais looks up at Tony, deferring to his judgment. "How about we just let the nice lady do her job," Tony suggests neutrally. "I only hire the best."

Then she gently presses into his ribs and asks him to describe the pain. That's when he realizes he was wrong earlier about it just being bruising. He can actually feel the splinters of bone moving under his skin and he holds his breath. His ears ring and his vision fuzzes a tiny bit. His fighting was sloppy as hell back at Steve's house. He's never been good in close quarters; he's naturally gifted with ranged weapons, and Hydra chose to refine his skills with them, giving him only fairly cursory training in hand-to-hand combat and relying on his enhanced stamina and healing ability to pull him through melee situations. So it's not surprising that Hydra got a few good hits in, but he's still disappointed in himself. 

"Four," he says finally. 

"Out of five?"

"Ten."

Anais gives Tony a look, but he just shrugs. "There's definitely two fractured right around here, where the swelling is the worst. They're simple fractures, though, so not much risk of a punctured lung. We could x-ray him, but..."

"No machines," Steve says firmly.

"Alright, sir. Then have him ice them regularly. Minimize movement until the pain and swelling abate. I can prescribe a painkiller..."

"No," Bucky says.

She gives him a sharp look. "Pain management can help with the healing process. If you don't breathe deeply while they heal because of pain, it can put you at risk of developing pneumonia..."

"I'm enhanced," Bucky says flatly. "Most painkillers don't work. Some work abnormally well. I don't like sedation."

She shrugs. "I won't force you."

"No painkillers," he repeats. 

Steve side-eyes him. "Bucky, you have to take  _ something _ ."

"I'll take acetaminophen. Nothing stronger."

"Fine."

His nose isn't broken, upon examination, just bruised. Steve sits next to Bucky as she treats his remaining lacerations, eventually leaning over to lay his head against Bucky's shoulder. Bucky's not sure if he should push Steve off -- Steve is clearly emotionally compromised right now, and in the morning he might wish he hadn't been cozying up to the ex-assassin who sleeps in his house -- but then he remembers what Steve said about helping Bucky into the car, how they've both had a long night, and he thinks Steve might need the comfort, so he keeps his mouth shut and even reaches out to squeeze Steve's far shoulder, to let him know he's okay. As soon as Anais is done, though, he stands and asks if they're going back to the house. 

Tony says, "Well, you  _ could _ go back to your house, which was just broken into, and which is currently crawling with SHIELD agents who are sweeping for bugs, upgrading your security system, bulletproofing your glass, one-waying your mirrors..."

"Tony..." Steve warns.

" _ Or _ you could spend a comfortable and serene night chez Stark, where a guest suite has already been made up on the twentieth floor, complete with on-demand superintelligent AI, eleven-hundred thread count silk sheets on a state-of-the-art memory foam king-sized bed, don't give me that look Rogers, and a Keurig machine."

"We'll stay here for the night. Unless..." He looks at Bucky, but Bucky just nods cooperatively. "Thanks, Tony."

* * *

 

Natasha trails after Steve and Bucky as they enter the apartment Stark unlocked for them. Bucky is asleep standing up at this point from the events of the evening, but for some reason is dragging his feet on the way to bed, and Steve has to practically drag him into the king-sized bed, which is exactly as ridiculously luxurious as Tony promised it would be, replete with royal blue silk sheets. Steve helps Bucky get his shoes off (Bucky tries to bat him away, but he insists) and gets Bucky under the covers, but he won't close his eyes.

"Steve, I have to take watch."

"What do you mean?" Steve struggles with the impulse to smooth a hand over Bucky's brow. Seeing Bucky half-dressed (he threw off his shirt as he entered the room) and laid out in bed, even striped with lacerations, is doing things to his body that he'd rather ignore.

"Hydra is out there looking for you. Or me. And I'm... sort of your bodyguard. I don't have to sleep yet."

"You need to rest. Your metabolism's going crazy fixing you right now. You're feverish as hell." Steve can actually feel the body heat pouring off him from where he's standing, and his eyes are unnaturally bright and glassy.

"No -- Hydra put me through this before. I've worked hurt worse, and on less sleep. I took out a SHIELD outpost in Bulgaria with a pocketknife and flail chest once after being awake for thirty-six hours straight, back when I was at peak. I'm still functional. If you give me a gun I'll be more than functional," Bucky insists, sounding more than a little delirious.

Every time Bucky feeds Steve a detail like that Steve has to stop and get control of the rage he feels towards Hydra for doing this shit to Bucky. He so rarely opens up about what Hydra did to him that every little fact Steve learns shocks and horrifies him all over again. Every time he thinks he understands the extent of it, Bucky will mention something -- like "Hydra made me kill rabbits and cats so I could learn to turn my empathy off for missions", or "Hydra trained me to withstand the cold by waterboarding me in the Sea of Okhotsk", or "Hydra used to recreationally poison me to learn more about my body" -- and it'll challenge anew Steve's belief that there's anything good in a world that could treat Bucky so badly all over again.

Once he's got the anger under control, he addresses the ceiling. "Jarvis, let Bucky know what the safety precautions on this room are. Not the whole tower, just this room."

"Very well, sir. The door is protected with dual authentication; I have facial recognition scanners built in and it also requires the key that Sir lent you. The door is made of two half-inch layers of titanium and is braced against brute-force attacks. The windows are made out of a composite glass Sir designed, and are mirrored from the outside and resistant to projectile weapons. The walls --"

"Thanks, Jarvis, I think that's enough." Bucky has the look in his eyes that means he's going to relent. "Just sleep. I'll wake you up when I need you, okay?" He turns over, saying something that sounds kinda like "good night" into the pillow.

He goes back out to the kitchen where Natasha is waiting for him at the table, her chin propped up on one hand, not showing the early hour at all in her serene face, which is aglow with dawn light cascading through the window. He walks to the table and braces both hands on the edge of it. His head drops and his whole body starts to shake. He chokes back a sob, because the last thing he needs is for Bucky to hear him, come in to see what's happening, and find him like this.

"Here, Steve, sit down." He feel Nat's steady, cool hands guide him into one of the kitchen chairs as a whimper escapes him, and he has to bury his face in his hands to contain himself.

"He could have died," he whispers to her. "He didn't even wake me."

"Even at his current capacity, ten or a dozen Hydra agents are nothing to him. Trust me. He didn't wake you because he knew he didn't need to." She pauses with her lips pursed for a long moment. Then she adds, "It's... Protecting you is probably one of his ways of showing affection."

"He could have told me when he first suspected something was gonna happen. He said he had seen signs around the house. He didn't breathe a word of it to me."

"He probably thought you didn't need to know. He's never worked on a team before, with anyone. His handlers wouldn't have cared what he saw, only about his performance. It might not have even occurred to him that you would want to know what was going on. Anyway, you shouldn't dwell on what-ifs. You're both alright. The team will have to meet and talk about what Hydra's angle is, but that can wait. For now Tony's gonna deck out your house so nobody can sneak up on you again."

"Yeah," Steve sighs, "I guess it was too much to hope for that I could escape all his security stuff for much longer."

Natasha shrugs. "I know you want to live like a civilian, but you're not one. You have to accept that."

"I guess. I just don't like the idea of having countermeasures in the house. It's like living in a bunker."

"You'll get used to it."

"Yeah, eventually. I have to." He rubs his thumbs across the edge of the table. "The stuff Hydra did to him... you've read his file?"

"Yes," she says. "I know some of it firsthand."   


"God, Nat, I know. And I can't imagine..."

"You were saying?" Natasha interrupts. She rarely likes to talk about her own past with Steve, and when she does it's in her own time.

"I don't know how he can trust anyone after what happened to me, but he wakes up every day and decides to let me into his life. I don't get it; I don't understand him." He takes a deep breath and blurts out, "I... I think I love him."

The words sit between them.

Steve feels like a rift has just opened in the floor under his feet. He didn't even know he was thinking those words until they slipped out, but now that he's said them he knows it's true. It's not just lust, either. Okay, he might be lusting after Bucky too, but there's more to it than just that. Today, waking up to Bucky standing in Steve's doorway with dead Hydra agents behind him, having taken them out without even telling Steve there was a fight going on because he didn't want to scare him... It had awoken something in Steve, something that had been rousing for weeks now, a fierce desire to protect Bucky, and a desire to  _ know _ him, to be able to get inside his head and understand him, to learn him in the limited time they have with each other.

And at the same time he was reminded of just  _ how _ limited his time is. Even in the best case scenario, he and Bucky only have months left on their contract. After seeing (albeit after the fact) what Bucky is capable of tonight -- taking out over ten agents single-handedly while seriously injured -- Steve's pretty sure Bucky's going to want to return to a position where he can exercise his full capabilities once their contract concludes. Steve's not arrogant enough to believe Bucky might need him, let alone want him, once he moves on from this job -- he's in his element as a field operative, and he knows he wants to go back to a position where he can use those skills. So these few months he gets with Bucky might be all they get: only a few months to enjoy the tentative relationship they've built. Tonight also reminded Steve that their time could be cut short by any number of things. Both of their healing serums only do so much. If Bucky were to be captured by Hydra, if he were to be unlucky in a fight... Steve shudders.

Bucky clearly has trust issues and Steve had been counting himself lucky that they managed to develop a healthy rapport at all, and now he finds his heart desiring more, opening to all kinds of new possibilities and attractions, possibilities Bucky may not even want to explore, complicating everything even further. 

Natasha squeezes his shoulder. "Steve, you're a good man. If anyone could make it work with him..."

"It's not that. I can't... we're on a contract. He's my employee. There are boundaries I need to respect. I... I shouldn't have said anything. Please don't tell him."

"Fine, I won't. But you have nothing to be ashamed of. He's a good man, and anyone can see the bond between you two." She looks him in the eye. "You know practically every helpmeet relationship ends up here at some point, with someone developing... inconvenient feelings."

"I know. I'm not ashamed of it, but I don't know if this is what's best for him right now. My first priority has to be that he's okay. That he's happy. Everything else comes second. Tonight scared me real bad, Nat. I hate the thought that I wouldn't have even known if Hydra had hurt him. I wish he had trusted me enough to wake me up. I wouldn't have been angry, even if it had been a false alarm."

The two sit in sober silence for a minute as Steve tries to get himself under control. After a while, Natasha says, "Hey, do you remember the third mission we ran on the same team while I was your helpmeet?"

He thinks for a moment. "We were staying in that janky hotel, and we were supposed to be making contact with a double-agent, a German, through a dead drop. But he didn't show..."

"We had a lot of fun that night."

"Until he almost shot both of us the next morning."

She prise one of Steve's hands from his face, laying it on the table between him and holding it in one of her own. "That scared both of us, didn't it?"

"Yeah, I'll say."

"But we both lived."

"Right."

"Steve, you know this kind of thing happens  _ all the time _ in this line of work. You're never guaranteed a tomorrow, and neither are the people you're the closest to. I know you're upset about this right now, but you can't let this break you. Most agents of SHIELD go their whole careers and retire without being seriously injured or killed. The odds are good. All you can do is prepare to be one of the unlucky ones, then trust that it won't happen. You can't dwell on it."

"I know. I just... I know." He curses and braces both hands on his knees. 

"You sure you're okay?"

"I'm tired. It's been a really long night. And I... I haven't been sleeping much. This was the first night in... in a while."

Natasha pulls him into a tight embrace, and he curls around her smaller form. She somehow always knows what to say to talk him out of his fear and pain. He misses living with her -- not every day, but on days like this, he remembers her solid, dependable, presence as part of his household. He misses that, even though he's happy she's found a new job that allows her more autonomy and creative control over her work. He's so thankful to know her still, to have kept her as a close confidante, to be able to wrap her up in his arms like this, as if she's a flame of pure goodness he can protect from the wind.

"You need to take care of yourself, too," she murmurs in his ear. "I'll see you in the morning, okay? Get some sleep."

"Alright," he says. He's asleep almost as soon as he joins Bucky in the bed.

* * *

 

He wakes in the middle of the night to find that Bucky has unconsciously gravitated to him, clinging tightly to his back with one arm slung over Steve's waist. Surprised to find him there, Steve tries to scoot away. He's pretty sure Bucky would never do this if he were conscious, so it seems wrong to let him do it unconsciously. But Bucky mutters something in a language that doesn't sound like English -- either Russian or just nonsense sleep-talk, Steve can't tell -- and drags Steve back towards him. Steve doesn't want to wake him, and he's already drifting back to sleep, anyway, lulled by Bucky's intense body heat. 

When he next wakes, Bucky's side of the mattress is cold, and he can hear the shower running with the door open in the other room. He rolls over and wonders if that moment last night was just a dream.

* * *

 

In the morning, Steve makes Tony promise to keep an eye on Hydra's movements. The team is pretty convinced that they were going after Bucky specifically, and they fear that this initial strike team will be followed by more forceful actions later on down the line. But they agree there's nothing they can do for the time being but take down as many Hydra bases as they can, and they're already hard at work on that. 

Natasha takes the pair back to their house in the morning. Bucky is much steadier than he was last night. He does baulk when they enter the front room of the house; he turns around and slips right back outside, muttering something about bugs and opsec. Natasha goes back outside with him and gives him the full explanation of Stark's security upgrades to the house (which are myriad). She familiarizes him with the encryption on their webcams and phones that ensure whatever information passes through them stays between Steve, Bucky, and Jarvis's threat-detection algorithms only. Once Bucky knows what to expect in the house does he go in and sweeps every room, Steve trailing behind him, until he's convinced it's empty. 

After that, they're both happy to find that they slip back into their normal routine easily enough. 

 

* * *

Bucky doesn't tell Steve that he sits outside his room sometimes at night to keep watch afterwards, listening to the faint traces of Steve's breathing that filter through the door. It helps Bucky sleep. Steve doesn't need to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Bucky and Steve regroup in Stark's tower. Bucky meets Tony Stark briefly. He has a panic attack when Stark takes him to have his injuries examined by a nurse and there's an examination chair similar to the one Hydra used to use to immobilize him. Steve and Tony take him to another room where the nurse confirms that he'll heal OK. After Bucky's asleep, Steve admits to Natasha that he's interested in him, but asks her not to tell him. Also, Tony Stark only gives them one bed even though Steve specifically asked for two #whoops #DefinitelyAnAccidentForSure
> 
> They return home afterwards, but not before Tony thoroughly security-upgrades their house.


	12. The Arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky finally starts to face what Hydra did to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: past physical abuse that is severe but not graphically described. Also a brief mention of past suicidality.

"Steve? I need help with my tie."

Steve opens the door to his room to let Bucky inside, which is when Bucky abruptly realizes he's never actually seen Steve in a suit before, just the slacks and button-downs he wears for work. He's in his shirt and tie but doesn't have his jacket on yet. The shirt is white, the fabric slightly translucent, and it clings to him, rippling like a fluid over his broad shoulders and about his muscular arms; his dark tie demarcates the border between his pecs, highlighting the definition of his chest. Bucky is thankful that he already told Steve what he needs or he would have no idea why he came to Steve's room, all rational thought having left him completely. He can actually see one of Steve's nipples through his shirt. Did nobody tell him about undershirts? Is everybody too intimidated to mention them to him? Or do they enjoy the view as much as Bucky is?

He meets Steve's eyes, and Steve gives him an intense look that lasts for half a second, then a full second. Distantly, some mechanical part of Bucky's brain notes that Steve's pupils have dilated.

Then Steve snaps into action, briskly taking the tie from Bucky, their fingers brushing. Steve loops the tie gently around Bucky's neck, ties it, and carefully tightens it almost to Bucky's throat. "I'll teach you the knot sometime, when we're not in a rush," he promises him. Bucky wonders if Steve has noticed that his hands are shaking again and is sparing him the embarrassment of showing that he physically can't tie a knot right now.

He's a bit nervous about the dinner.

Bucky has found some cognitive tricks that help him accept his job as Steve's helpmeet. He thinks of himself as a useful tool. In a way, he was a tool for Hydra the same as he's a tool for Steve, at least on a superficial level. At Hydra, his handler gave him tasks, and he completed them. He had a low level of control over details, picking his own nest, arms, and tactics but handed his to-do list (or, in this case, his to-die list) by a superior to complete. Likewise, as a member of Steve's household, Steve gives him tasks and he completes them. In this case he has more control over the details, choosing when and how to accomplish the assignments Steve gives him, but the general principle is the same. Once he adjusted to see himself not as the world's best assassin but as a kind of highly competent servant in both roles, he was able to accept working for Steve pretty quickly. He even enjoys being Steve's subordinate at times.

However, Bucky is  _ not _ used to being a decorative item or a status symbol, and those are his best guesses for what his role will be at this dinner. Steve won't clarify whether he's supposed to be arm candy, a secretary, or something else entirely. Will he be expected to go over the conversations with Steve later? Is he supposed to talk at all? Or is he supposed to be silent? Will he be expected to kneel on the floor beside Steve? He's heard some helpmeets do that in public, to show deference. Will he speak to the other helpmeets? Will he be present for the whole dinner or will he be asked to leave for Steve's team to conduct business?

He's been asking Steve these questions for a few days. Steve has told him to sit at the table like anyone else, follow the lead of the other helpmeets, talk if he has anything to say, and that he'll be present for the whole dinner, and most of all, Steve has told him about five hundred times to "be himself". That directive is useless to him. He doesn't know who "himself" is even supposed to be. He kind of wishes Steve had specified some other persona for him. Bucky has plenty of practice acting the part of a wealthy socialite or a rent boy on reconnaissance missions for Hydra. He could act as a male escort in his sleep; hell, he'd be happy to play Steve's trophy husband for all he cares. But he's not quite sure how to take on a role as  _ himself _ .

"Ready to go?" Steve pops out of his room a moment later with his jacket on, and it highlights his trim waist even more than the shirt did. He cuts an imposing figure. He sweeps towards the front door, gesturing Bucky to follow him, and ushers Bucky out to his car.

Okay. So they're really doing this.

Bucky clutches his hands together in his lap in the car to mask the tremor. He's feeling the beginnings of a headache already, which isn't a good sign. When Steve tries to make conversation he can't bring himself to reply in anything but monosyllables.

Steve doesn't get out immediately when he turns the car off in front of the restaurant -- instead he turns towards Bucky and grips him by both shoulders. "Hey. You with me?"   


"Yeah." His stomach is full of dread. It feels like he's been eating ice.

"Listen, you're gonna do fine. It's alright if you don't want to talk. Just try to enjoy it, okay? If you're really uncomfortable, we can go home. The team will understand."

"Got it," Bucky says. He hates being ordered to enjoy things. He just knows this isn't going to be an easy night.

 

* * *

 

Steve dislikes the opulence of the restaurant Fury has chosen. He's doubly annoyed with Fury for this showy spectacle because of how anxious it's making Bucky. Steve's not sure what's setting him off -- whether it's the luxurious location, to which Bucky clearly is not accustomed; the unfamiliar clothes he's wearing; or something else entirely, some detail of Bucky's day Steve hasn't heard about. Steve had thought this would be a low-stress opportunity for Bucky to start toying with the idea of working for SHIELD (there's the possibility that he could start helping Steve with his SHIELD responsibilities as well as being his helpmeet, which would ease his transition over to being a full-time agent of SHIELD if he decided to go that route after his helpmeet placement), and a way for Bucky to make social connections with Steve's friends, both the agents he works with and the other helpmeets that will be there. But he thinks he may have misjudged. Bucky keeps adjusting and readjusting the left cuff of his white shirt around his prosthetic arm. Steve's never seen him show any self-consciousness about its appearance before, only about its occasional malfunctions, but he seems nervous about it now. He tucks it into his pocket as the hostess leads them to their table.

Steve reaches out and squeezes Bucky's shoulder. Bucky turns a surprisingly sunny smile on him. If Steve didn't know him so well, he probably wouldn't have realized that it was faked. He wishes he could take Bucky and leave, but if he knows one thing about Bucky it's that he's too proud to accept such an offer.

The private room to which they're lead is even more opulent than the rest of the restaurant by half, featuring a precarious-looking faux-crystal chandelier scintillating ostentatiously over the middle of the table. Steve and Bucky simultaneously glance up at it with trepidation, then exchange a significant look --  _ what kind of idiot architect would leave about eight hundred potential knives hanging over a table like this? _ That seems to break some of the tension -- Bucky relaxes fractionally.

Steve leads Bucky to two empty seats at the side of the table. Most of Steve's coworkers are already seated. Fury is at the head of the table, glowering at everyone with his good eye. Steve knows well enough not to be intimidated; he hopes Bucky isn't afraid of him. Natasha is here, as well as Bruce and Tony. Sam gives Steve a wave as they walk to their seats, then raises his eyebrows at Bucky. Steve didn't tell Sam that Bucky would be here. No doubt he knows better than anyone else at the table that it's a pretty big step for Bucky to be willing to come out in public. 

Tony has brought his wife, Pepper, and his helpmeet, Peter, a young man Tony is mentoring in engineering in exchange for help in his lab. Peter is young, and his position more like an intern than a helpmeet in the classic sense -- Tony keeps a professional emotional distance from him, although he has rooms in Tony's tower, near his apartment. Clint sits across from Natasha and next to Peter. Lastly, Phil Coulson, former director of SHIELD and now an agent, is seated near the foot of the table.

The topic of conversation when he and Bucky sit down is the UN meeting Natasha, Clint, and Phil recently attended. The debate is over Sokovia's alliance with SHIELD: the small nation is socialist and has a true democratic government, and has frequently refused to cooperate with SHIELD on missions on Sokovian soil, citing ethical concerns about augmented humans. Fury claims it's just because they don't understand augmentation, and points out that most of SHIELD's augmented employees weren't augmented by the US government anyway. But Natasha, through communicative looks, gestures, and only the occasional spoken word, makes it clear that she sympathizes with Sokovia on this one.

Steve cuts in here and there with a brief comment, but mostly he lets the conversation wash over him. The waiter takes their orders and then brings food. Steve gets caught up in the chatter. He's relieved to find that Fury doesn't have a fixed agenda for the night beyond the quick debriefing on the UN meeting -- sometimes these dinners turn into full-on business meetings. 

The Avengers discuss everything under the sun: companies they suspect might be fronts for Hydra (Tony makes a clearly joking but extremely impassioned argument for a certain fetish toy company), what bases they want to bust next, what Peter's been working on in Tony's lab. Clint ribs Natasha for drinking wine when a Russian like her should be having vodka (she gives Bucky a saucy wink as she flashes a flask from her purse at him when she thinks nobody else is looking, though she's not drinking from it). She's in a great mood, chatting and signing with Clint more animatedly than Steve's seen her do in weeks, though for Natasha that means the corner of her mouth quirks up in a smile once or twice throughout the evening. 

Steve's even more surprised when she's leaning across the table to rehash the layout of one of the Hydra bases they took down in western Europe to Clint and he touches her on the arm to get her attention -- and she actually stops talking and turns to Clint without jerking her hand away or berating him. Steve files _that_ incident away for later review.

The moment soon passes and Natasha goes back to subtly stealing food off everyone's plates, timing her heists so that everyone in the room except the victim can see what she's doing. Steve rolls his eyes when he notices that  _ someone _ has picked all the strawberries out of his spinach salad, and she catches his eye and winks at him, completely deadpan, her fork buried casually in one of Clint's precious roasted tiny potatoes.

Amid the friendly chaos, Steve almost misses it when Bucky's metal hand abruptly clamps down on the arm of his chair, almost silently, yet hard enough to start to splinter the wood.

Steve instantly snaps out of the conversation. Bucky is staring fixedly at his metal fingers like he's never seen them before.

"Hey Buck, what's going on?" He reaches up to touch Bucky's shoulder, but he jerks away and rises fluidly, pushing his chair back. His face is calm, but Steve can tell that it's a front. The conversation around the table ebbs as eyes dart to him, and Bucky glances around the table with another fake, but convincing, smile.

"I just need a little air," he says, and then he's loping towards the door like he wants to run but is just barely restraining himself.

Steve stands up as well as Bucky slips out of the room. "I'm just gonna..." he says, and turns for the door. He knows everyone at the table will understand. Hell, most of them have been the person suddenly fleeing the room themselves.

Bucky weaves through the tables in the restaurant, walking unsteadily like he's a little drunk yet somehow managing not to even brush anyone he passes. Steve is catching peoples' shoulders left and right as he hurries after Bucky, apologizing quietly. An old lady glares at him as he squeezes between her table and the wall, but he hurries on.

Bucky heads out the front door and Steve bursts out after him into the icy air. Bucky's standing facing out into the parking lot. He was so focused on getting outside that now that he's out here, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. His posture is stiff and both of his hands, metal and flesh, clench and unclench around nothing at his sides. He turns slowly to look at Steve, first tilting his head to one side as if to hear him better, though Steve hasn't said anything, then finally locking his eyes onto Steve's face. Just as quickly he loses focus, his gaze wandering abstractly into the sky.

"Hey, Bucky? What's going on?"

"That was too much," Bucky says absently. A car starts somewhere in the lot, and Bucky whips around to face it, then relaxes and turns back to Steve.

Steve steps in front of him, and it looks like Bucky is focusing on his face intermittently, then drifting off somewhere else again. His eyes dart back and forth like he's watching something Steve can't see. "Are you having a flashback?"

"I tried to hold it off..." he murmurs. Now he has his metal arm out in front of him, the prosthetic wrist grasped in his other hand. He stares and stares at it, flexing the fingers. 

Then he twists the metal arm and a blade unsheaths through the base of the wrist, the handle protruding from his arm such that he could draw the knife with his other hand. Steve has never seen him do this before, and it's a little disturbing to see what's clearly a knife stuck in Bucky's arm, even though he knows rationally that the knife is part of the prosthetic. He steps back, afraid for a moment, but Bucky simply sheaths it again and drops both his hands to his sides.

"You know where we are, Buck? We're outside the restaurant."

Bucky shakes his head, then changes it into a nod. "I know where we are. I just... I'm also... somewhere else."

"Do you want to tell me what you're remembering?"

"It was a hit," he says without hesitation. Too late, Steve wonders if Bucky knows what he's saying -- if he would have even trusted Steve with that much if he weren't clearly dissociated halfway into the atmosphere. "A hit I carried out for Hydra."

"Would it help to tell me about it?" As he talks, Steve herds Bucky carefully back against the wall outside the door, where they're relatively out of the way. A couple comes out and heads out to their car without paying them a second glance. 

Bucky seems to come back to the present a little bit. "This isn't supposed to happen. When I focus, I can keep this from happening. It's like seeing a loose thread on your tac suit. Once you've seen it, you have to stop yourself from pulling it, or, or..."

"It's alright. You don't have to stop it. Just let it happen."

There have been moments when Steve has caught a glimpse of Bucky's past -- the incident with the alcohol, though Steve thinks that was mostly a miscalculation on Bucky's part rather than using alcohol to self-medicate as many vets do; the time Bucky accidentally broke Steve's shelf and wanted Steve to let him clean it up while he was actively bleeding from his face... Still, this is the first time Steve has seen Bucky in an actual flashback. It scares him a little. Of course his other helpmeets occasionally had them too, but Bucky has a metal knife embedded in his arm, and Steve was there when Bucky killed a dozen Hydra agents two weeks ago. Singlehandedly. In the dark. The Hydra agents had had night vision goggles. Bucky was wearing sweatpants and armed with two kitchen knives. Knowing Bucky's power and seeing the raw emotion crossing his face -- guilt, fury, regret, resentment -- sets Steve's nerves a little on edge, as much as he trusts him.

"I was shot," Bucky says, breaking Steve out of his thoughts. "I used to... when Hydra got me, I still had my left arm. My original left arm." He gestures vaguely to it and takes a shaky breath. "I lost my forearm -- just to the elbow -- in an explosion. A trap the mark's bodyguards had set on the parking garage where I was gonna shoot him. It was a small IED, and the construction was botched so most of me was fine, but there was enough shrapnel and bone shards and contamination in my arm that Hydra decided to just amputate. They replaced it with a prosthetic. Then they realized they could attach anything they liked to it. They gave me a set of claws, taught me to use them in hand-to-hand combat. They had a blunt gauntlet too, and swords, ultra-sharp ceramic blades. I still had a dexterous hand, my right, for detail work. It was perfect for them. It made me an even better soldier. A more valuable asset." Bucky shudders. 

"Then I was on another mission," he continues, "a few months later. I had just gotten adjusted to the forearm prosthetic. It was at the point where I was better with the prosthetic than I had been without it -- I was almost as accurate with that hand, and much  more powerful. I was shot on that mission." He takes a breath. "Steve. I'm not fucking stupid. There was nobody, nobody associated with the mark, who could have shot me from that angle. I always check the perimeter of where I'm setting up. I was thorough. I know that building was abandoned. I know none of the mark's guard had realized I was going to assassinate him.  _ Nobody _ could have shot me from that side, unless..." He stops, gathers himself. "But I was. It was a shotgun round, hit me in the upper arm." His voice starts to choke up. "I woke up metal from the shoulder down. And my handler said... she said... I hadn't been careful enough... it was my fault, and I needed to be punished... It's fucking obvious, now that I can actually remember. They took  my arm, Steve. They took my fucking arm!"

Steve's stomach drops as he finally puts all the pieces together and he feels the blood leave his face. Hydra conspired to shoot their own agent as an excuse to equip him with a weapon, a weapon permanently grafted to his side. A weapon that's a part of him. For a minute, all Steve can do himself is breathe, trying to quench the  _ utter rage _ he feels at the thought that someone would do that to  _ his _ Bucky.

Then he sees the way Bucky's looking at him, the fear and confusion in his eyes. Bucky has insisted all along that he was a contractor for Hydra. He has never once alluded before to the torture and punishment to which he was subjected. 

This memory, the realization that Hydra gave him his arm to turn him into a weapon against his will -- this is what has pushed Bucky over the edge. Has made him realize for the first time that what happened to him  _ wasn't _ normal.

Steve remembers the day  _ he  _ realized he was traumatized. When he finally realized that hurting himself just to escape his memories of war, of the soldiers who were lost alongside him, of his debilitating guilt over not having been one of them, over somehow surviving into the next century despite good men, better men than he, dying and rotting in the mud, without even the dignity of graves, wasn't normal. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of his entire life: finally facing the emotions he hadn't been allowing himself to feel, and seeing years before him unable to escape that pain, the pain of what he himself lost, the pain of knowing that in the chaos of war, though he tried to do the best he could every second of every day, it wasn't enough to save everyone who fought alongside him. 

He had wanted to die. He had come close to succeeding.

And Steve wasn't even tortured. He was just a regular soldier for a few years. He can't imagine what Bucky is going through right now, but it must be terrifying.

Acting on instinct, trying to read Bucky's body language, he tentatively puts his arms around him. When Bucky leans into him slightly, Steve embraces him. Bucky breathes slowly, visibly controlling himself.

Steve doesn't move, holding him, silently glaring at everyone who gives them so much as an appraising look walking into or out of the restaurant. Bucky relaxes fractionally, but soon he pushes Steve away. "I never realized -- everything they did to me -- all the punishments -- I could have fought back. I could have  _ stopped _ them! Why didn't I? Why did I leave them alive? What if they do it to someone else?"

"Listen, Buck, I don't know the details, but I know you were brainwashed --"

"Even if I had been a living zombie --"

"Even if you had been fully conscious the whole time, even if they hadn't done anything to your mind, you still wouldn't have deserved what happened to you, whether you tried to escape or not."

"You don't know what I did for Hydra. You don't know the innocents I killed, the --"

"No, I don't, Bucky, but I know you. I know you wouldn't have done that stuff if you had had a choice."

"You don't know me at all," he says softly.

"A few weeks ago you risked your life to protect me even though we met less than a year ago. That told me all I need to know about you, Bucky. I trust you."

That finally silences him.

"Buck, I've gotta go inside to tell the others we're going home. Can you --"

"Going home?" Bucky pushes himself away from Steve, not too roughly, but Steve is disappointed anyway. From the looks of him Bucky could still use a little support, but it's clear he's done allowing himself to be vulnerable for the time being. He holds his breath for about five seconds -- he had been breathing hard, almost hyperventilating -- and when he exhales, he straightens up, adjusting his suit jacket, pulling the sleeves back down and fixing the tuck of his dress shirt. "No. We'll go back in there. The meeting isn't over."

The transition back to emotionless, guarded, business Bucky practically gives Steve whiplash. "For one thing, it's not a meeting, it's a dinner. At this point it's just an excuse to hang out and converse. Secondly, there's no way I'm making you sit through the rest of it after that."

"I'm not hurt."

"Not physically, but you're clearly not okay, either."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, and we're not going back in there."

"I want to do it."

"Bucky, I really, seriously don't think that's a good idea." 

"I don't want to run from this," he says. "I don't want to let them control me any longer. I want to go back in there and talk with your friends. Like a... a free person." He actually sounds angry now, not afraid.

Steve really,  _ really _ wants to drag Bucky home. But it would be counterproductive to force him to do it. "As long as you promise me you'll talk about this later. You can box this away for right now, but you can't do that forever. Okay? You have to deal with it at some point."

"Sure, I know. Thanks. Come on." He turns and heads back into the restaurant as if nothing has happened. 

Actually, that's not true -- he's a little less tense than he was earlier, as if he was anticipating the flashback and now that it happened, he has nothing to worry about. Steve shakes his head and follows him back inside. Nobody at the table is stupid enough to ask where they were.

And Bucky is fine for the rest of the dinner, even chatting a little with Clint and Peter. It probably helps that the rest of the team all have a few glasses of wine in them by now, and most of them are smiling, laughing, and keeping up a steady stream of non-combat-related conversation. While talking to Natasha and Clint, Bucky picks up a few signs and starts to use them alongside his speech as Natasha and Clint do, despite the fact that it puts the prosthetic on display, and Clint is clearly flattered by the attention. Steve wonders if Bucky realizes Clint's flirting with him. Clint flirts with everyone, but Steve doesn't blame him for paying Bucky a little extra attention.

At the end of the night they walk back to Steve's car together to head home. Steve is caught up in how beautiful Bucky is, how his long, dark eyelashes are highlighted by the streetlights in the parking lot behind him, how they pick out his angular facial structure. Steve traces the glitter of stubble on his jaw and chin. Bucky has always had a muscular build, but he's gained weight since entering Steve's employ, and even since they got this suit tailored for him -- he fills it out so well he's on the border of needing the seams let out; it's almost indecent. 

He seems lost in his thoughts, gazing up into the sky, though there aren't many stars visible because of the light pollution from the city. As soon as they left the restaurant, he had dropped his playful expression. Now he just looks exhausted.

"I'm sorry about... earlier," he says eventually.

"You know I don't mind," Steve says as they get into the car. "I'm glad you stayed, but it would have been fine if you had wanted to go home. I would have gone with you."

"Maybe you should mind." He tips his head forward, letting a curtain of hair fall between him and Steve. Steve keeps his eyes on the road, merging onto the highway. Eventually Bucky says, "I keep screwing up. The other night with the drinking, and now..."

"Frankly, given the break-in and everything you've gone through recently, I'm more surprised that this was as well-controlled as it was. You didn't hurt anybody, the rest of the team didn't even see it happen, and you went right back inside and did fine the rest of the night."

"It shouldn't have happened at all."

"There's no should or shouldn't with this stuff, Bucky. It  _ did _ happen." Steve searches for words, trying to find the right thing to say. "You know a lot of vets get flashbacks after they go back to being civilians."

"I know, Steve. I'm in therapy," he says. "It's supposed to be normal. Hydra taught me to shut them out, but I guess... I guess I'm not doing what they taught me anymore."

"They taught you to shut out flashbacks?"   


"No, memories," he says. "I mean, they used to wipe them. But they also taught me, if was remembering something, to... go around it. So that I would never consciously know the memory. They would stay... behind me. Like shadows, but I could never see the thing casting the shadows."

Steve hums, frowning. After a minute, he thinks it might help to tell Bucky, "It's not always... bad to remember. Or even to have flashbacks. I had them for a few months, once or twice a week. In public, a lot of the time. The people, the lights and technology, would set them off." He blushes, but plows forward despite his lingering embarrassment over them. "But it's healthy to remember. It's painful, but... eventually it helps you heal. Over time you'll be able to think about... maybe not all of it, but some of it, without shutting down. The rest of the team have all been through it too. I think Clint had, like, two flashbacks total before he joined SHIELD and he's been okay since then. Natasha is frankly anyone's guess. But Sam  _ still _ gets them, and he's been out for years." He drives on for a minute. Bucky is looking out the window silently. "It's okay if you're upset."

"I'm not upset," Bucky blatantly lies. Steve figures Hydra probably taught him to do that, so he doesn't call him on it. "Why did you hire me? You knew," Bucky says simply.

"That you would be traumat -- sorry, I shouldn't say that. That you would have flashbacks? I knew there was a chance." Steve shrugs. "You're not the first helpmeet I've had who's had some issues. You know, what you did for your country and for your regiment during the war... I only know the bare details, but I know the honors you were given after the army thought you were dead. You were inhumanly brave for your team, Bucky. In a good way," he adds quickly. "You're a smart, competent person. You deserve a good job and a comfortable life. Beyond that, you're good at this. Like I said, you probably saved my life a few weeks ago. Not everyone could have done that. Private security certainly couldn't have. Natasha, maybe.

"Anyway, like I said, I've had them myself. Among other problems. It would be pretty hypocritical not to hire someone who's having the same problems I once had."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You know, I still... fall apart sometimes. The night Hydra broke into our house, I practically had a breakdown after you were in bed, Buck. I cried to Natasha about it." Bucky looks up at him in mute surprise. "You can do that too. You can be vulnerable every once in a while. Or all the time, whatever you need. You don't have to keep everything buttoned up so tight. You have to stop beating yourself up every time you're not perfectly in control for a minute. I know you're trying hard, and you're getting better, whether you see it or not. Even tonight... I would rather that not have happened, for your sake. But you were good company this evening. I was happy to have you along, and I had a nice time. It doesn't -- you don't -- have to be perfect to be worthwhile."

Bucky turns away from him. When Steve starts to say something, Bucky says, "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

A minute later he changes his mind. "Steve, next time..." he says quickly, "If you ever have a time like that night with the housebreakers. When you talked to Natasha, and you were upset. Wake me up. Come get me. So that I can help. That's my job. Would you trust me with that?"

Trust Bucky to hear a whole conversation about his own trauma and how it's okay and ignore every part of it except for Steve implying that there was a time Bucky could have been useful to him but didn't ask him to help. "Of course. As long as you'll do the same for me."

"Mm." It's noncommittal, but at least it's a response. 

Steve pulls into the driveway and turns the car off. Neither of them move for a moment. Then Steve, telegraphing his movement, reaches up to rest his hand on Bucky's left shoulder, the prosthetic. It's hard, with no flesh-like yield under his fingers, and he can feel the tiny recalibrations and vibrations of servos inside it, but it's warm, slightly hotter than body temperature if Steve is any judge.

He knows he's going to have nightmares imagining how Bucky got it, how afraid and hurt and alone he must have felt when they took his arm from him. Until today, Bucky didn't even remember what had happened to him. He must have bought the story Hydra told him -- that losing his arm was somehow Bucky's own fault.

As the car cools down, Bucky shifts under Steve's hand, not pulling away but leaning towards him. When Steve faces him, he finds Bucky far closer to his face than he would have expected. Steve doesn't pull back. The orange street lights outside gleam off Bucky's wide eyes as he looks up at him, and his lips are parted. Steve has the strangest thought: It almost looks as though Bucky is about to kiss him.

Confused, he parts his own lips on instinct, then stops himself, waiting to see what Bucky's next move will be. What Bucky does is say very quietly, and very close to Steve's face, in that husky voice of his, "Goodnight, Stevie." Steve feels his breath feather across his face. Then Bucky turns away, putting distance between them, slips out of the car, and is in the house before Steve can shake himself out of his reverie. The car is stone-cold by the time Steve uncurls his chilled fingers from the wheel and walks inside.

* * *

 

 

Bucky lays awake for a long time that night.

He has remembered more and more of Hydra over the weeks, far more than he's let on. The SHIELD doctors have confirmed that he's recovering neurologically from the electroshock, and as his brain rebuilds new neural connections, memories flood back to him in fits and starts. He remembers enough now to put together a timeline of when they owned him, and to remember what his day-to-day life was like. He combs over his memories in bed, his metal arm stretched out as far away from him as he can get it, trying to understand them in light of what he knows now about his handlers, that they were willing to remove his arm to make him a better soldier.

Bucky remembers the room they kept him in before missions or when they needed somewhere to hold him between tests and training. It had white subway tiles on all four walls and the floor, and a two-way mirror was set into one wall. (Bucky never learned what was behind it, though he thinks he can remember trying to punch through it after they captured him. It must not have ended well, because he knows he didn't try again.) There was a narrow cot, a set of weights, and a pull-up bar in the room, and nothing else. Hydra wanted him to keep his upper body in shape; the arm grafted to his side was so heavy, especially before they made improvements to the parts and swapped out some of the steel components for lighter metals and vibranium, that it would do permanent damage to his skeleton and muscles if he didn't maintain his body in close to peak condition. All he was allowed to do in the room was exercise, sleep, or sit quietly on the edge of the cot or on the floor. Doing most anything else -- talking to himself, singing, humming, whistling, making most any other kind of noise, drawing pretend pictures on the subway tile with his fingers, biting his fingernails, chewing on his hair, picking his skin, playing with his clothing, masturbating... -- would get him punished. Not even by his handler, but by anonymous guards who waited outside the room, presumably watching him through the mirror or the CCTV camera in the corner. They would come in silently, tackle him, lay him out on the bed, and whip his back until he was raw. Or use electrical shock, a perennial favorite even when they weren't trying to erase his memories.

Bucky learned not to speak. He learned not to think much, either. The boredom would have killed him otherwise. At the time, Bucky had thought they were training him to snipe -- the trick of it was to remain blank-minded, but alert, for hours on end while waiting for the mark. They were making him infinitely patient.

Now he notices that it also made him silent, compliant... helpless, because it would take him so long to decide to break his silence and risk punishment by refusing or debating orders that by the time he decided he wanted to contradict his handler it would be too late. 

He remembers that early on with Hydra, he would lash out and rebel. For a long time, when the guards manhandled him into the room with the chair where they wiped his memories and the cryo chamber, he would fight back, trying to hurt them. Frequently he succeeded in at least making them bleed for what they did to him. His first handler resigned -- the man was fair and never unnecessarily cruel to Bucky, but he eventually complained that Bucky scared him and requested to be transferred. 

Bucky killed his next two handlers.

After he killed the first one, that's when his memories seriously start to fragment. Everything in his mind was distorted and occluded by the effects of the electroshock machine. He started to get confused back then, confused about who he was and what Hydra was doing to him. Before they used the machine, some part of Bucky was always resisting them, searching for the next opportunity to escape or fight back even while they were beating him into submission, although after a few weeks he knew there was little hope for his rescue. He had memories, now so indistinct and faded he can't even make out the details, of a life and family to which he longed to return.

After they started electroshocking him, he became Hydra's pawn entirely -- a war machine, half flesh and all weapon. That was when he met his fourth handler, the one that stuck.

She was his only source of stimulation in the Hydra base. She constantly ran him through training exercises, taking him out into the Russian taiga between missions and demanding he retrieve coins hidden in the snow deep in the woods without any directions, or having him practice shooting targets from impossible distances in the glaring sun or a whipping blizzard without gloves. She would lock him outside naked until he figured out what exercises would keep him alive the longest by burning his body fat (what little he had left of it) for heat. She punished him for everything. For taking too long. For making noise. For choosing inefficient methods, even if they worked. She tormented him with electricity, needles, and even, on a few memorable occasions, knives.

All part of his training, he was told. Soldiers in the US went through similar things during basic. Learning to be a soldier was supposed to be miserable. War was miserable. Training was supposed to prepare you for misery. It wasn't supposed to be easy, especially since Bucky was being trained as a special operative, a perfect weapon, not just some guy with a gun who might have half a chance of offing someone before getting blown up.

Now he thinks,  _ She could have killed me with any of those tasks. _ He survived mostly through sheer luck, with a little determination and some skill mixed in. He remembers now the one time she had set him out to track a rat they had released into the woods in back of the base in the middle of the night. Bucky had lost the trail and wandered through the woods aimlessly for hours before even his augmented metabolism had given in and he had collapsed from hypothermia. 

They almost hadn't found him in time. He had been nearly comatose, and badly frostbitten. This was before they had given him the arm -- he had actually lost a joint from one of his left fingers, even though there was natural antifreeze running through his veins from the serum.

At the time, he had thought his handler was teaching him a lesson by leaving him out there to almost die. Now he thinks maybe she was just enjoying watching him suffer.

But when Bucky did well -- when he made the impossible shot, the first time he killed a moose bare-handed, and on his first few successful missions with her -- his handler, the last one, would run her fingers through his hair. She would hug him and kiss him, telling him that she loved him and she would take care of him if only he was  _ good _ . 

Now that he's put together the pieces about his arm, it seems obvious. He was never Hydra's  _ employee _ . They never paid him. He was their slave, at best. At worst, an object they were using. Sure, they made him the world's best sniper, but in the end he was nothing but a tool.

He turns over in bed, clutching his metal arm to his chest and staring through the shades out the double-thickness bulletproof window. He's not Hydra's tool anymore, he knows that, but he's not quite anything else either. A little too sharp-edged to be a helpmeet, too psychologically fucked up to be a bodyguard or soldier. He's a nothing, a null. 

How is he supposed to build a new life for himself when Hydra has carved his entire foundation away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Bucky goes with Steve to a business dinner with the Avengers. Midway through he walks out and has a flashback during which he realizes for the first time that his handler arranged to have his left arm amputated, but tricked him into believing he lost it on accident on a mission. This puts his memories with Hydra in a new light and he realizes that he was being exploited by them. Although he knows what they did to him wasn't right, he doesn't know how he will move on from it because it's all he knows.
> 
> Also, if you want to talk to me on the ol' Tumbler I'm there at singular-they :)


	13. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky starts to drop his guard a tiny bit. So do the people around him. Well, except Clint, who probably never had his guard up in the first place.

"You can call me Natasha, you know," she says out of the blue, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

Bucky just stares at her. He's still not sure what to make of Roman-- of Natasha. She's appeared much more relaxed today than he's ever seen her. The few times they've gone out to get coffee before or after his therapy appointments with Sam, she's been fairly brisk with him. It actually puts him at ease. He's more comfortable interacting with people in positions of authority over him, and with impersonal interactions. But today she's leaning fluidly over the railing of the nearly-empty botanical gardens to which she has taken him, fondling the petals of an orchid with one hand (it's quite suggestive), and watching the captive, colorful birds that flit from tree to tree. On the outside, it looks like she doesn't have a care in the world.

"What do you mean?" he tries. He calls her by her last name in general, but he's not sure what prompted her to bring it up now.

"Well, we're not on business right now. This is pleasure. I took you here as a friend. So we're going to call each other by our first names, like friends. Make sense?"

"I'm always on business," he deflects.

"I know," she says coolly. Ah. So she's giving him hints because she realizes he doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to do in this type of scenario.

He sometimes gets the sense that Natasha knows things about him that even _he_ doesn't know. For example, this trip. She proposed that they swing by the botanical gardens in the city on his day off, and he agreed, both because he knows she could probably fire him if she wanted to, and to honor his agreement with her vis-a-vis checking in with her once a week. It's been clear from the beginning that, despite the ostensible casualness of the outing (she suggested it last night as though it had just crossed her mind), she's strategized every minute of it. They took the subway into the city, and Natasha subtly taught Bucky how to operate the ticket machines and read the subway maps and schedules by narrating offhandedly to herself as she did these things, never once letting on that she was doing it for Bucky's benefit even though there was clearly no other reason she'd talk herself through it. She probably knows Bucky doesn't get out much and doesn't know how to take the subway even though Steve's house is right near a stop. The city itself was pretty deserted once they got there, but every time they passed a camera-wielding tourist, Natasha just _happened_ to be crossing between them and Bucky whenever they took a photo. She probably knows, perhaps from personal experience, that being recorded still makes him uneasy because of his extensive covert-ops training.

Then when they got to the gardens, Bucky found them practically deserted. Bucky's willing to bet they're mobbed on the weekends or after work hours, but Natasha knew enough not to take him then; he wouldn't have made it in the door. As a finishing touch, she's been leading the way around the large central atrium, the rainforest exhibit, and she's been sticking to the catwalks that line the perimeter of the gardens rather than venturing into the middle of the space where their backs would be exposed to anyone lurking in the indoor forest. It _could_ be a coincidence, but he knows it isn't.

Just like he suspects Natasha planned, Bucky feels reasonably relaxed and steady in the space. He can let his guard down enough to enjoy seeing all the little flowers and touching the leaves of the plants. Natasha doesn't try to make him talk too much, but their silence is comfortable.

It's almost like they can just be two regular people enjoying the day together.

"I had a flashback at dinner the other night," he says out of the blue. "That's why me and Steve left for a while."

"Mm."

"He didn't tell you, did he?"

"Of course not." But she knew anyway.

There's a long pause.

"Did he give you the 'it's normal' speech?" Natasha asks.

"Yeah."

"Did you buy it?"

 "Not really." 

"He's right, you know."

Bucky looks away from a palm with huge, frond-like leaves that sprout up over the catwalk. "I guess. I don't know why he has to be such an asshole about it."

"If by 'be such an asshole' you mean 'he's patient and kind and I don't know how to deal with that because nobody's treated me like a human being in the past seventy years,'" Natasha says at a brutal deadpan, "then me neither."

"He said he used to have flashbacks, too," Bucky says. "But I doubt he ever ran out of a restaurant like that."

Natasha raises her eyebrows. "Maybe you'd be surprised."

"He doesn't talk to me about it."

"Maybe you should ask him."

" _Ask_ him?"

"Yes, _ask_ him. Is that so unthinkable?" She moves off down the walkway.

"Kinda," Bucky mumbles, following after her.

"Ask him what the real reason he only hires war vets as his helpmeets is, while you're at it."

"The real reason?"

"He'll know what you mean." She turns and grabs ahold of one of his shoulders and fixes him with her piercing gaze, and he flinches. As warm and, well, normal as she can be sometimes, when he looks into her eyes he can see a hard glitter sometimes, like the glint off permafrost, a glimmer of the winter's endless dusk. Something he recognizes in his eyes in the mirror, sometimes. "He worries about you, you know. Which means you could hurt him. If you ever do, I'll kill you. But not because I don't like you. I'll do it purely on principle." She lets go and he takes a half step back, bewildered.

"Come on, let's see the tree frog exhibit," she suggests blithely.

Bucky trails after her, slightly stunned and only about 95% sure she's joking.

* * *

"Hey, what's this?" Bucky asks, pointing. "This is supposed to be a strawberry poison dart frog, but it's blue. This is false advertising."

Natasha comes up and looks over his shoulder. "That's a blue-jeans morph. Common in the pet trade."

"Oh, where does it say that?" Bucky scans all the signs around the exhibit, and by the time he realizes it _doesn't_ say that anywhere and Natasha must have hidden knowledge from who-knows-where about poison dart frog morphs, she's moved onto the next exhibit. All he can do is roll his eyes and jog to catch up.

* * *

 

"I told you, your job is to sit there and look pretty," Bucky says to Steve later that night after he asks to help cook dinner for the third time. Steve scoffs and throws his hands up at the kitchen table, but complies. All Bucky has left to do is to stir the curry occasionally until enough water boils off, so there's nothing for Steve to do. And Steve's just come home for a long day at SHIELD, and it's not his job to cook, anyway. "I like cooking. Let me have this one thing," he jokes.

"Fine, fine." Steve sits up at the table and moves forward to lean towards Bucky, and Bucky straightens up in response. "So," Steve starts, "speaking of this one thing. I've been talking with Fury about possibly looping you into some of the projects that are going on at SHIELD. How would you feel about working for them?"

Bucky frowns. "I thought I already was."

"Well, yeah, for the helpmeet agency. But as a helpmeet, if the administrators agree, you're allowed to additionally take up part-time work with SHIELD itself. Compensated, of course. Fury and Natasha both agree that you've been doing fantastic with this job, and they're interested in what you could do for SHIELD."

Bucky is shocked speechless by the fact that SHIELD thinks he's been _so_ capable as a helpmeet that he could be useful doing whatever Steve is referring to for SHIELD as well. But this sounds like a step towards his desire to get back in the field, to do something productive with his talents. He doesn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"That's great! Okay, how about I take you to the office on Monday? You have a button down and slacks to wear, right? Like, business casual?"

He looks down at the sweats he's currently in. "I do." Natasha had made him buy a small business-casual wardrobe just the other day, in fact, helping him order online using measurements she had acquired from the tailor Steve had brought Bucky to. He realizes belatedly that she must have known this was coming.

She seriously knows everything.

"Good. A lot of what I'm working on right now is rooting out the remaining Hydra cells. My team is doing intelligence work -- well, Tony's heading it up, he's the best with sensors, but the rest of us are researching and combing through data manually. We're tracking down groups of scientists performing illegal human trials with experimental drugs, a few strike teams that they use to terrorize communities into giving them resources, that sort of thing. That sound okay?"

Bucky turns it over for a minute, standing over the stove so Steve can't see his face. "Will you want me to go in the labs?"

"No, no." Steve pauses. "I don't think SHIELD wants you actually in the field at all yet. You'll just be working with information, at least at first, and if they want you in the field they'll start you with non-combat situations. To be honest, we could really use someone with insider knowledge who knows a little about how Hydra operates, what they might be thinking."

"I don't actually know anything about them. Hydra didn't exactly give me the rundown of the org chart. I don't know any names or anything."

"Yeah, I know. The SHIELD questioning you went through was pretty thorough. But you still might have overheard something, or seen something that you don't realize would be useful. Anyway, even if nothing interesting comes up, you can certainly help _me_ keep all the data straight. We have a lot on our plate right now. We don't even know how many of these cells are left, or how well-established they are, besides order-of-magnitude estimates. From the few we've raided, we know their usual layout, but that's about it. It's a huge project and we could really use the extra pair of eyes."

"Alright, I'll do it," Bucky says. Internally, he winces as the weird loyalty he still feels to Hydra flares up. Since he remembered his handler orchestrating the amputation of his arm, he no longer wishes Hydra would take him back, and he has no desire to return to their methods of training him, the brainwashing and neurological damage. But it still hurts to turn on the organization that took seven decades of his life. To some raw, naive part of him, working against Hydra means admitting that they were able to hurt him, to _break_ him in some way, and he's still deeply uncomfortable with that.

But he also feels a burst of pride for himself. He's proud of himself for agreeing to try something new, and he's proud that Steve sees him as reliable enough to be useful to SHIELD. Hydra took almost everything away from him, but it seems like Bucky is starting to build something with the few pieces of himself that he retained.

* * *

 

Bucky ends up working out very well as part of Steve's team. Clint, whom he met at the dinner with Steve before he left, is the Avengers strike team's current sniper, and he and Bucky get along -- Clint has no verbal filter whatsoever, and Bucky finds it weirdly refreshing. Steve is always careful to be kind to Bucky, not to pry into his past or trigger him. And Bucky deeply appreciates that. But there's something about Clint's irreverent, born-in-a-barn comments that make Bucky feel right at home.

The first time the rest of the Avengers send them off to work together one-on-one placing sniper nests near one of the Hydra bases they've managed to sniff out for Clint and a few other SHIELD soldiers who will be accompanying the team, the first thing Clint says when they're alone together is "Sergeant Barnes, anyone ever tell you you have a _fantastic_ ass?" Bucky looks around the conference room as if Clint could possibly be talking to someone else who also happens to be named Barnes. He has no idea how to respond. Undeterred, Clint continues, "Look at that thing. You could bounce a quarter off an ass like that. Frankly, it's not fair. Have you seen my ass?" He turns around and helpfully gestures. "It's so flat you could eat dinner off it. You could play a hand of poker." Clint's ass is perfectly fine, Bucky thinks. He knows better than to say that out loud, which unfortunately leaves him with no idea of what he could possibly to cause this uncomfortable, if funny, tirade to end. "I'm not even _that_ gay. Maybe a tad. Just a little. But your butt just does not quit." Bucky smirks, then lets out a quietly huffed laugh. Clint goes on for an additional thirty seconds and by the end of it Bucky is full-on in stitches. He hasn't laughed so far ever since he can remember. Well, at least since before the war.

When he and Clint finally get down to business after about five minutes of what Clint calls "shootin' the shit," Bucky is comfortable enough to actually think over the tactics they're discussing without being hyperaware of everything Clint does, and he's able to help build a nearly watertight arrangement for the snipers so they'll be able to cover the areas where the strike team is likely to be most exposed as well as all the major entrances and exits on the building. Natasha just nods when she sees the plans they've drawn out. Her quiet approval says a lot.

Natasha starts to play a greater role in his life, too. She takes him to the tower's gym to train three times a week, working with him one-on-one and linking him up with some of the personal trainers SHIELD keeps on staff. She wants to re-train him to fight at closer quarters to compensate for the changes in his motor skills. Bucky hates the idea at first. He doesn't want to admit that the nerve damage he's apparently sustained with Hydra, although it seems to be slowly healing over time, has pretty much ruined his ability to shoot. When Nat tests him at the gun range, his aim is good, but that's it -- just good. She doesn't say anything to him, but she doesn't have to. He knows he's nothing as a sniper compared to what he once was.

But training with Natasha is fun as soon as she can get his mind off his tremor. She seems to understand the firm hand he needs and bosses him around easily, but without an attitude of superiority. Much like the few times Steve has taken charge of him, Bucky finds it relaxing. She teaches him motions from an eclectic mix of fighting styles, from judo to tai-chi to MMA, and runs him through them for hours until they begin to become second-nature and he can add them to his repertoire.

They actually spar on one of the thick mats in the well-appointed gym the fourth time they go together. Natasha, despite being smaller than Bucky, has been trained to use leverage and momentum to take down much larger attackers at close range. Bucky's using all his concentration to try to adapt to her brutal style of fighting. He's used to fighting at a remove, relying on his patience, willpower, steady hand, and foresight to do most of the work for him. He's been superficially trained in close combat, but he was also trained to avoid close combat whenever possible because his most highly honed skills are only applicable at a distance. Facing off against such a tactically advanced opponent is a trial that takes all his energy despite his advantage in terms of sheer power. As usual, he loses the first three consecutive rounds to her before he manages to pin her, and even then the score remains close to even, each adapting to the others' style in turn in a fast-paced arms race of martial arts tactics collected from across the globe.

After an hour of this, Natasha pins him with an arm across his collarbones. She stops fighting for a moment, her red hair falling forward to nearly brush Bucky's cheeks. "You were Red Room, weren't you," she says. By her tone, it's not really a question.

But he doesn't remember anything about it. He'd heard of the Red Room, but only in whispers among his Hydra guards. Perhaps they were whispers about him. "I... I don't know. maybe."

"You must have been," she says, and lets him up. He stands still, uncertain, as she circles around him. "I've never seen a fighter anywhere else who... who thinks like they taught us to."

"I don't remember." He closes his eyes, tries to think, because he can tell this is important to her. "I remember being at a sort of camp. In Russia. But I don't..."

She doesn't respond. Natasha isn't the most expressive person at the best of times, but her face is completely shuttered now. He wonders if she'll tell him any more about it, or probe to see if anything comes back to him, but she doesn't. Instead she directs him over to the stationary bikes and tells him to ride his hardest for half an hour. Then she walks out of the room and he doesn't see her again until he comes into work the next morning.

* * *

 

Bucky's position un-syncs his schedule with Steve's a little bit.  Later that week he gets a car home from the Avengers tower after training late with Natasha. When he gets home Steve is already there; his car is in the driveway. Bucky calls for him when he enters the house, but he doesn't hear anything.

He eventually finds Steve in his office, asleep on the couch. This isn't hugely unusual for Steve -- occasionally he drifts off between coming home from work and eating dinner with Bucky, especially if he's had a long day at work or had to go in early for a meeting. What is unusual is the open sketchbook on the floor beside the couch. The pages are folded under it, as though it's slipped out of Steve's hands and landed haphazardly there.

Bucky goes to pick it up to make sure the pages don't crease. The drawing to which the sketchbook is open gives him pause. It's a war scene, two men beside each other in a trench. One of the men, Bucky can tell even from the drawing, has the characteristic visual of a corpse, looking somehow flatter than the other, bleeding from several wounds. The other is turned slightly away. His face is partially hidden by his hands, but even from the shadowed features that are visible, it's easy to tell that he is crying. The paper is sepia-toned and the artist -- Steve, Bucky assumes, based on the date marked on the paper, 1943 -- has picked out the details of the tears on the man's face in white, making the rest of the drawing look dusky in comparison.

He flips through a few more pages. The images he sees are all of war. They are unfamiliar to Bucky, populated with soldiers, battles and skirmishes. What Bucky knows of combat has mostly be one-on-one except the few times a group has ambushed him or he's been caught running away from one of his hits. It's silent, patiently lying in wait for the mark to fall into the sniper's trap, lining themselves up for the perfect shot. The war Steve shows in his sketchbook, by contrast, contains scenes of gregariousness between soldiers, lines of men eating in a mess hall together, people of different nationalities fighting together and mourning each other.

Steve stirs and Bucky sets the sketchbook down in front of him, not hiding that he's been flipping through it but also not holding onto it now that Steve is awake.

"Oh," Steve says, sleepily sitting up and rubbing his face, and looks from the sketchbook to Bucky, gauging his reaction.

"They're talented pictures."

"I guess. I thought about going to art school, but then the war started..." He flips the sketchbook shut and picks it up. "I didn't mean for you to see them. They're a bit dark."

"But you like to look at them anyway."

"Yeah. I guess I... I don't want to forget how lucky I am. Sometimes, when I think about giving up, I remind myself of all the soldiers who fought alongside me in those conditions, having lost friends and family, who kept fighting no matter what happened..."

"You think about giving up?" Bucky asks, alarmed.

Steve shakes his head, but it's not a 'no', it's a 'topic dismissed.' "I don't really want to talk about this anymore. I'm going to put my book away. Are we gonna have dinner?"

Bucky narrows his eyes, but Steve gives him his blankest look, and after a minute Bucky capitulates. "Alright. I'll cook."

"Great, I'm gonna put on some music," Steve says with false joviality.

* * *

That night, after Steve goes to bed, Bucky walks outside his door and stands there staring at the line of light shining out from beneath it. He feels drawn to be near Steve sometimes, and he doesn't really know why; there's a pull that calls him here, this time sparked by his worry over Steve's comment about giving up. Sometimes he sits outside Steve's door to guard him, but this is different. He wants to be close to him. Just as inevitably as the pull itself, he finds himself unable to actually enter Steve's room or even talk about it with him. He wants to be near Steve, but doesn't want Steve to see or acknowledge him.

He listens to Steve opening and closing drawers, probably undressing. Bucky sits down just to the right of his doorway, listening intently. If Steve opens the door for some reason, he can jump up and pretend to be going to the kitchen for water.

He hears Steve brush his teeth and wash his face, then the bathroom door closing gently behind him and the creak of bedsprings as Steve gets in bed. Bucky closes his eyes, breathing silently and listening, but there's nothing further. After a while Steve's breathing becomes audible and evens out as he falls asleep.

Eventually he convinces himself to go back to his own bedroom to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nat could use some friendly advice on expressing affection almost as much as Bucky could tbh


	14. The Taiga

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Steve go on their first mission together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter still feels a little weird to me. I've been trying to get it into shape, but I've been working on it for a while so I'm just going to post it and potentially go back and edit later. as they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good :)

The next day the team have an early meeting with Fury. It turns out to be about a contact who defected from the Hungarian branch of Hydra. "We've finally gotten her to agree to meet us. She's hiding out in the woods in northern Canada in a little cabin where Hydra can't find her. Her name's Erdei. We've been in contact with her occasionally via radio, but connectivity is terrible and she refuses to broadcast for more than a few minutes at a time, so we're going to send a small team to meet with her and take down any information she has about Hydra."

"Who's going?" Steve asks.

"I want to send you and Sergeant Barnes."

Steve raises his eyebrows. "Not Natasha?" Bucky is too surprised himself that he was chosen to be offended by the question.

"I'll be meeting up with a contact of my own in China, around that time. Unfortunately, you boys will have to tough it out without me."

"You're sending me into the field?" Bucky asks. A spark of heat burns in his chest, touched off by Fury's announcement that he would be accompanying Steve.

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes. The psychs cleared you for non-combat ops based on your employment record thus far. And besides Natasha, you have the most experience with remote operations, so you're well suited to this task. Talking to Erdei is the easy part; the hard part is getting to her cabin. We can't send aircraft because they'd be detectable from the sky, and the forest is thick enough that it's impassable by vehicle. You and Steve will be hiking in."

Tony huffs. "I've said a bazillion times, I can get you a beacon that will patch Erdei into the cell network through airtight encryption, and you can get it to her by drone, but does anyone listen? N--"

" _Yes_ , Tony, they do, and they've already told _you_ a thousand times that Erdei isn't allowing anyone to bring comms equipment within fifty miles of her house," Fury chastises him. "This will be a pen and paper meeting only."

"But I'd make it secure," Tony complains.

"And she's trustworthy?" Steve asks.

"As far as we know, you and Barnes will be perfectly safe."

"When are we leaving? What's the timetable?"

"The hike in and out of her location takes about two days, and you'll leave the day after tomorrow. Tony, show them the equipment we talked about. Meeting adjourned."

 

* * *

 

The following two days are a whirlwind of briefings. He and Steve go over Erdei's entire file, which ends up being more sad than intimidating. She grew up in poverty and originally entered Hydra as a test subject under a strict confidentiality agreement. She signed herself over to them for a substantial sum of money in order to buy her father a kidney transplant. When he died of complications, Hydra promoted her to the manager of a small research team shortly thereafter. Likely Erdei had threatened them into it somehow -- perhaps they had had a hand in her father's death. At any rate, Erdei, according to the brief account she had given SHIELD, had quickly realized that Hydra's experiments were completely illegal. There wasn't an IRB in sight, and the compounds Hydra were giving to human test subjects, according to Erdei, had all kinds of nasty psychoactive and physical effects. However, she couldn't find a way out of her contract until Natasha contacted her and offered her amnesty in North America through SHIELD in exchange for her cooperation in taking out the remaining Hydra bases. Erdei strongly negotiated the terms of her agreement to include her remote hidey-hole and a long waiting period before she would be willing to talk to American agents.

"She wanted to be sure we weren't going to double-cross her before she'd talk," Natasha explained. "Apparently six months undisturbed in the Canadian wilderness finally did it for her."

The day they're set to leave, Tony outfits them with the cold-weather gear he showed them after the briefing. He's designed a warm tac suit for Bucky that bears more than a passing resemblance, both in appearance and in functionality, to the uniform he used to wear for Hydra, except that it's not all black (there are touches of deep green and brown added to improve camouflage in the woods) and the red star on his left shoulder has been replaced with a design of a star within two circles that matches an emblem embroidered in a few places on Steve's uniform, though it's olive where Steve's are muted red-and-blue.

"I thought you might be more comfortable in familiar gear," Tony says as he checks all the buckles and closures in the back. Bucky can reach them himself, but Tony is protective of his inventions and wants to make sure everything is perfect. "Though it is a shame to hide that figure behind all this insulation. And bulletproofing."

"Why is everyone here obsessed with my figure? You guys don't get out enough," Bucky retorts. The suit is warm, and he has to admit it does feel like home.

Luckily he has the last word in that conversation: a resounding crash echoes from the lab behind Tony, and he rolls his eyes. "Mr. Stark?" a young voice floats out after it.

"I've gotta go check on the kid," Tony says. "You two be careful. Don't forget about the emergency beacon. There's condoms in the --"

" _Yes, thanks, Tony_ ," Steve cuts him off. Tony puts both hands up in an exaggerated gesture of innocence as he returns to the lab.

"You know I did read the contract, Steve," Bucky says. "I ain't exactly a blushing virgin over here. If you asked..."

"That's not what I -- I mean -- it's just rude!" Steve says, and Bucky laughs at him as they head towards the jet.

 

* * *

 

"Do you think it's been good for you, working in the tower? You seem happier," Steve asks Bucky as they wait on the idling jet, seated beside each other. He doesn't want to make Bucky self-conscious about his recovery, but he can't help pointing it out to him, the progress he's made.

"Yeah, I think I am. I remember more, you know. Not just the flashbacks, but good memories. Stuff about my family, before I went off to war. About working at the docks when I was a teenager... going to school... the army before Hydra. Nice things. Bad things too, but it's worth it." He pauses as the pilot calls back on the intercom, reminding them to do up their four-point seatbelts and lean back as they'll be lifting off soon. "I think a part of me is still the person Hydra made me, if you could even call it a person," he resumes after the pilot finishes speaking. "Part of me will probably always be a weapon." He jerks his left shoulder. "I was afraid I might lose that part of myself. Being a weapon protects me, and it's all I knew for a long time. But... I think I can be a weapon and be something else too. Something Hydra didn't decide for me. Maybe something less dangerous," he finishes quietly.

Steve puts his arm across Bucky's back, moved by the uncharacteristically long speech, and squeezes him to his side for a moment. It's impulsive, and he's surprised when Bucky's weight actually falls against him for a deliberate moment before he pulls away.

 

* * *

 

The jet touches down in a snowy field an hour or two later. Bucky gently wakes Steve, who has dozed off. They put on the rest of their tac gear -- this is supposedly a non-combat mission, but they were instructed to stay at least minimally armed just in case, and frankly Bucky wouldn't dare to set foot anywhere even superficially resembling the Russian taiga without at least three guns and two close-range weapons close at hand -- and descend the staircase of the jet into a bank of snow that buries them up to their hips. Bucky hardly feels the cold; he endured much worse on missions for Hydra, and when his handler was testing him. Steve crosses his arms and frowns, but doesn't look very bothered either. Bucky has discerned that Steve runs noticeably hotter than the average human, maybe even hotter than Bucky, probably because of the supersoldier serum.

They jog a few steps away and the jet lifts off again with a muted growl, fading into the overcast sky. Around them, pines rise like spires, encrusted with dry, powdery snow. What little undergrowth there must be in the forest is buried deeply in the drifts.

Steve fishes a tiny compass out of his pocket and checks their heading (Bucky can easily orient them from the sun, but he lets Steve take point). He leads the way into the forest. It's very quiet, even quieter than Steve's home, all sound muffled by the soft banks of snow. Bucky spots the tracks of a mouse, several foxes, and a brown bear, but they're all hours or even days old. The sky is clouded but bright, and every so often a sharp wind lashes the trees, whipping up a momentary tempest of snow, like being caught in a white-out blizzard for just a moment. As Bucky follows behind Steve, he's surprised to find himself calm, steady, confident.

It reminds him of Russia.

They hike mostly in silence for the first hour or two. Then Steve talks to Bucky in a steady stream. He reminisces about his family, how he grew up in poverty in Brooklyn and how cold it would get in the winter. He talks about the music back then, the dancing, how he was picked on in school before he became a supersoldier. Bucky listens half to Steve and half to the sounds of the forest, sensing its many signs, monitoring the patterns in the snowpack beneath him.

He and Steve steadily eat through the mountain of dehydrated energy bars Tony packed for them. The sun climbs, but barely makes it a few inches above the horizon, shedding only a wan, grey light, before it starts to sink again. The sky fades from deep blue to light blue-grey and then begins to go dark, the few wispy clouds strewn across the horizon blushing.

Bucky is barely sweating; Steve doesn't seem exhausted at all. Even though they set out in the early afternoon, the increased heart and lung capacity they both have thanks to the serum has allowed them to make it at least twenty miles into the forest by the time it grows dark enough that they decide to pitch camp. Bucky doesn't need much sleep, but Steve likes to get his eight hours a night regardless.

When they start to set up the tent the situation becomes more interesting. Bucky is hauling the tent since Steve took the sleeping bags. It's another of Tony's creation, outfitted to withstand the most brutal winter storms and constructed of a thin, yet somehow bulletproof, fabric and poles of an extremely durable and lightweight alloy that Tony refuses to share. It's also, Bucky realizes as he helps Steve lash it down to trees atop their groundcover in lieu of staking it into the frozen ground, barely big enough to fit the two of them lying down side by side.

Steve announces that they'll eat before they sleep, so Bucky has a little more time to contemplate exactly _how_ Tony thought Steve and Bucky would both fit in the tent. They heat condensed camping food with a tiny electric stove, but the wind begins to pick up as the woods go fully dark and Steve suggests they move inside the tent to avoid freezing. Bucky isn't very cold yet, but he's so numbed to the sensation of cold that he's occasionally gotten frostbite without noticing, so he follows Steve into the tent.

Bucky sits as far away from Steve as he can possibly get, kneeling to save space. Steve, of course, doesn't seem at all bothered by their proximity. "This is actually pretty good. MREs didn't come in chana masala back in the day," he comments. Bucky doesn't answer. He's hyperaware of the musky smell of Steve's sweat filling the tent and mingling with his own. He can feel their combined body heat accumulating.

The environ is so like Russia that Bucky keeps slipping into the mindset that he's on a mission, that Steve is either his target or some hapless bystander who has gotten in the way. He _knows_ he's on a mission _with_ Steve, and it's not even a killing mission, but the fact remains that the only other times he's been camping in the taiga were when he worked for Hydra, and he was always alone on those missions. Hydra made sure he'd be fixated on the mission objective at all times; the objective would be the only thought in his mind during the mission, and he would see everyone and everything around him in relation to his goal: the mark themself, the trees and buildings around him, anyone he saw would be a potential witness or threat. One of his trainers had actually used a dog collar to shock him if he so much as glanced at something irrelevant during training exercises or in the field. The lesson was powerful and has pursued him into this tiny tent with Steve.

Only now his focus on Steve is only half related to the mission. The other half is something heated and coiling inside him that he can't quite bring himself to acknowledge.

Now, in the dimming light suffusing the tent, he can hardly drag his eyes away from a tiny, melting chunk of snow sliding from Steve's hair down the side of his neck. Steve reaches up and wipes it away and Bucky follows the movement of his hand raptly, then shakes himself. Something's wrong with him. He needs to refocus on the present. Without explanation he slips outside the tent to walk the perimeter of their campsite and get some fresh air.

The scrunch of snow under his feet, the impossibly quiet sounds of ice crystals striking together in the wind, the few blue stars he can see through the conifer branches interlaced around him, they are all the sounds of his native place, the place where the kernel of who he is feels the most at home. Yet all he can think about is going back inside to be close to Steve.

When he finally re-enters the tent, Steve says, "I'm tired. Are you ready to turn in? I'm gonna turn the lamp off." Bucky just nods and watches as Steve lays out the insulation pads and their sleeping bags in the tent, which has by now trapped enough of their heat to be comfortably warm -- almost overwarm, as the two of them shed much more heat than the average person. The sleeping bags lie so close to each other that they butt up against one another. Steve doesn't seem to think anything is weird about this, but Bucky hasn't so much as slept in the same room as another human being for seventy years, much less right next to them like this. Steve strips down to his boxers and an undershirt, and Bucky follows his lead.

He doesn't know what's worse: how nervous he is to be so close to Steve, or how much he wants it.

They slide into the sleeping bags side by side. Bucky lies on his back, and already he can feel Steve's weight and warmth pressed against his side. It's like leaning against a sun-warmed stone. Steve neither shifts closer nor makes a move to get away, and Bucky is too afraid to move at all, terrified that this wonderful dream of closeness will end. He lies stiffly, wanting so badly to relax into the touch but unable to do so, battling with himself the way he does whenever Steve touches him. As Steve's breathing deepens and Bucky senses that he's falling asleep, he wonders how partners ever get used to this, to just being _this close_ to each other. It's simultaneous ecstasy and hell for him. If he were to experience this again, would he someday get used to it? Would the pleasure fade, or only the fear?

It's so wrong: Bucky spends all day in Steve's service, lives in his house and cooks in his kitchen. His job for Steve is what disrupted his comfortable life as an assassin, the life he's just barely beginning to rebuild. He should be sick of Steve, and he should resent him for how he's changed Bucky's life. But, perversely, Bucky only wants _more_.

He turns away from Steve onto his side and closes his eyes resolutely, drawing on the only trick that allows him to sleep: staying as still as possible with his eyes closed and forcing himself to breathe evenly until he finally drops unconscious.

It feels like hours before sleep will come.

 

* * *

 

He sleeps fitfully, to say the least.

At first, after he manages to fall asleep, he wakes up again at Steve's every unconscious movement. Steve at first sleeps deeply and peacefully, but even small twitches or changes in his breathing somehow wake Bucky. Every time he wakes up, he's disoriented, for a second unsure what country or year he's in, confused by the unusual setting. Though he's not cold, certainly not cold in the bone-deep, can't-get-warm way he would be after cryo, he's reminded of coming out of the ice. When his handlers would melt him, Bucky would be so disoriented, with half his neurons still frozen and the other half randomly sparking in confusion, that the technicians would have to repeat his name, the date, and his location to him to keep him from panicking while the amnesia faded a little and he recovered at least his long-term memories. He lived outside the stream of time, or rather drowning in it. He would come up for air, brief moments of consciousness, and catch a glimpse of the scenery around the river of time; then he'd be pushed under again, and when he next came up and looked around he wouldn't be able to tell if he had moved forward or backwards, where he had come from or where he was going.

He considers giving up on sleep entirely the fourth or fifth time it happens, but he doesn't want to wake Steve up by leaving the tent and have to explain.

Eventually he falls into a deeper sleep, but some indeterminate amount of time later he jolts awake again. He was having some kind of a nightmare, can still hear gunshots fading and smell wet dirt and smoke, but that's not what woke him -- it was Steve elbowing him in the ribs, none too gently, which confuses him until he looks over and sees that Steve is still asleep. He sleeps on his back, so Bucky can see his face, the tension in his traps and jaw, and his eyes flickering behind his eyelids. He's having his own nightmare.

Bucky is weirdly fascinated by it, so much so that he doesn't react right away but sits there for a minute or two, watching Steve's face. "Hey, Steve," he says softly after a few seconds pass. "Steve."

He doesn't wake. Bucky only hesitates for a moment before reaching out to grab Steve's shoulder. If Steve is confused and gets violent, he'd be hard-pressed to do any permanent damage to Bucky, at least since most of their weapons are secured outside.

Steve makes an awful, choked off noise as soon as Bucky makes contact, flipping over onto his hands and knees and grabbing Bucky's wrist, hard. Bucky doesn't move. Steve is breathing hard suddenly, almost gasping, and shaking. He puts one hand over his own chest. 

"Are you okay?" Bucky asks.

"What...?" Steve looks around. It's almost completely dark; the only reason Bucky can see what's going on at all is his enhanced vision. The whites of Steve's eyes glow in the dimness. "...Oh," Steve concludes eventually. He lets go of Bucky's wrist and Bucky quickly retreats to the other side of the tent to the extent he can.

"Want to talk about it?" Bucky offers, now that it's clear that whatever difficulty Steve was having breathing was psychosomatic.

"Not really," Steve says, sitting up all the way.

"Want to go outside?" Sometimes it helps to be standing up after a nightmare, to keep you from falling back asleep.

"It's alright. I just... need a minute." Steve presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Bucky imagines that if there were more light he was look exhausted. His body language radiates it. "It was the war," he offers eventually, "The first one. It's always the war. The fights I'm in now, at least they're mostly against people who _chose_ to join Hydra. People whose values are genuinely so fucked up that they agree with what Hydra is doing. Back then... civilians died in the battles I fought. And there were all the people we didn't save, the atrocities we didn't learn about soon enough... the ones our leaders decided weren't worth combating..."

Bucky nods sympathetically. "Water?"

"Please." Bucky gets one of their bottles from outside and hands it over to Steve. He rinses out his mouth and crawls over Bucky to spit into the snow before drinking from it. Bucky wonders if he tastes blood, if the smell of it gets into his sinuses like it does sometimes for Bucky. If so, where did he learn the taste? He tries to think of something he could say to make Steve feel better, but nothing comes to mind. These are the fears that plague Bucky as well -- not in the same form, but the sentiment is the same.

In the end, the best he can think of is, "It scares me too. All the time."

Steve shakes his head and sighs, then peels back the sleeping bag and gets up. "I'll be back in a second." He leaves the tent, and Bucky can hear him walking off a little distance from their campsite in just his socks. Bucky cocks an ear toward him, trying to ascertain if he's walking far enough that Bucky should track him from a distance to make sure he doesn't get hurt or lost, but Steve's footsteps stop and he hears nothing further.

He comes back after a few minutes as promised. "Sorry I grabbed you," he says. "I didn't know where I was for a second."

"It's fine. Are you going back to sleep?"

"Yep." He sounds determined, like it won't be pleasant but he's doing it anyway. He gets back in the sleeping bag and turns over onto his side.

* * *

 

When Bucky wakes he's alert, clear-headed, warm, and... shoved face-first into Steve's armpit.

He freezes, trying to assess the situation, but it's difficult to assess anything when he inhales Steve's unshowered scent, which should probably be sour but instead strikes him as spicy, musky, like a coffeeshop crossed with a gym except far more pleasant than the image that elicits. He doesn't want Steve to wake up to this. He'll get the wrong idea, and worse, he'll catch a glimpse of the humiliating inner part of Bucky that's starved for affection, desperate for love. It's a hungry part of him that's constantly _wanting_ and _needing_ in a way he never did when he was Hydra's fist.

He draws back carefully, finding that the entire rest of him is pressed up against Steve's side as well. Steve snuffles and blinks awake just after Bucky successfully extracts himself. Bucky thanks God and Jesus himself, dresses quickly, and leaves to pee. When he comes back to the camp he's a little more presentable and can at least pretend not to be blushing.

They break camp after a quick breakfast, packing everything back down into their backpacks, and pull on their cold weather gear, adjusting the weight of the packs on their shoulders and backs, and continue on into the taiga. Steve seems content to walk in silence, and for an hour or so they do. They switch off taking point, alert although it's clear they're practically the only mammals for miles around. They walk in each others' footsteps to reduce the effort of pushing through the snow, which varies between knee- and hip-deep depending on the thickness of the evergreen canopy.

"One of the first days I worked for you," Bucky starts, "You asked me what I did in my free time."

Steve looks back at Bucky. A half-balaclava matching Bucky's covers his jaw up to his nose, but his eyes betray his smile. He pushes the balaclava down to answer over the hum of the wind. "I remember that."

"Before the... Before Hydra, I liked to go dancing."

He braces himself for the impact of the memory. Thinking about the past too much -- even innocuous stuff, like the dance halls -- sometimes triggers other, unrelated flashbacks, flashbacks of the war before Hydra captured him, or of hits. But this time he doesn't feel anything but a faraway soft sweetness, like hearing the strains of the music he loved from another room.

"Dancing!" Steve says. "I remember the dance halls, and the music. Never danced much myself, but I liked to go and watch the girls I was friends with, made sure the other guys treated 'em right. When we get back, I'll find old records of the music and we can listen to it again. I have a record player I never use, somewhere," Steve enthuses. "Did you have a girl?"

"No. Well, yeah. I had a lot of 'em."

"You were a regular Casanova, huh?"

Bucky adjusts the half-balaclava over his face, then pushes it down around his neck. "Yeah, that's what everyone thought."

"What do you mean?"

"I never did anything ungentlemanly with those girls," he asserts.

This makes Steve laugh so hard a little bird bursts frantically out of the tree in front of them, which sends Steve into further peals of laughter. Bucky just waits, not sure whether he should smile or not. He settles on a smirk.

"I can just see it," Steve cackles. "You, a perfect gentleman."

"It wasn't difficult."

"Why wouldn't it be? You must have had plenty of, uh, opportunities for ungentlemanly conduct, seeing as..." And Steve gestures expressively all the way down Bucky's body.

It takes Bucky a second to get it, then -- _oh_ . Steve's saying he's attractive. He doesn't really think of himself as such, despite the fact that he's been spending an inordinate amount of time, recently, ruminating on how attractive he finds _Steve_. He usually considers his body as a tool, a weapon, not an object of admiration or an expression of himself. When he sees his own body it's like looking at a machine, not something beautiful. Yet working for Steve has made him more and more human. His body is a part of that, he realizes, part of his humanity: a warm, breathing, emotional, messy animal being, not just an inconvenient housing for his brain and metal arm. For some reason it hasn't occurred to him until just now to wonder if his body is attractive or unattractive.

Regardless, he finishes his thought: "I'm gay."

"Oh," Steve says, rather anticlimactically, "Makes sense." There's a moment's hesitation, in which the powdery snow squeaks under both of their tactical boots as they shuffle forward. They're moving very slowly; it's lucky that both of them are enhanced or it would be extremely difficult to hike even a few miles on this terrain. Pausing to take out his compass (Bucky wonders, not for the first time, why can't he tell where they're going from the sun), Steve says, "I'm bisexual."

Bucky just hums -- he figured. 

* * *

In the late afternoon Steve starts to flag and their pace drops. Bucky takes point to save Steve the effort of pushing through the snow, but still, they're moving more slowly than he would like. Eventually Steve calls for a water break.

"Are you tired?" Bucky asks him.

He gives him a wary look. "A little."

"From..."

"Yes, from last night."

"Do you sleep better alone?"

Steve shrugs. "No. Having someone there actually helps sometimes. Someone who... understands."

"Is that why... Nat told me you only have veterans as helpmeets."

Steve looks up, his expression thoroughly guarded. It's weird to see that cool, deliberately blank expression on Steve's face, though Bucky's used to seeing Natasha make it, and to seeing it in the mirror. "Yes. I don't... I don't like talking about that stuff with civilians. It makes me feel more alone." He sighs. "We should get going if we want to make it to the cabin before dark."

Bucky makes a quiet frustrated sound, but he lets Steve change the subject just like he did the last time they talked about his own problems. 


	15. The Cabin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky reach the cabin and talk to Erdei. Then everything goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a bit to post! I just graduated from college and was busy celebrating & moving my stuff back home. Hope this chapter makes up for it :)
> 
> Content warnings: A character thinks about self-harm, but doesn't act on it. Also some violence/blood in a separate scene.

Steve exhales in relief as the tiny cabin emerges from between the frosted, snow-laden pines. Dusk is blue and thick in the air around them, and Steve had begun to worry that they might be lost. They passed a few landmarks that were noted on their map -- a tiny, frozen green pond, an incongruous pillar of rock standing on end in the snow -- but for the most part each mile of taiga is indistinguishable from the last, and they haven't seen anything to indicate they were on the right track in an hour or more. Bucky eventually told Steve, when Steve started to look worried, that he has what he calls an "internal compass" and was sure they were still headed in the right direction. Apparently he was right.

Their contact lives deeper within the woods and will be hiking out to the cabin tomorrow to meet with Steve, so the two of them enter the cabin and settle in.

The space is cozy. The cabin only has one room, with a minuscule kitchen stocked with MREs and a few cupboards of canned goods, though only one set of silverware (Bucky lays claim to the fork; Steve gets the spoon). There's a full-size bed piled with wool blankets, a writing desk, a number of cold-weather survival items such as snowshoes and flares, and a single oil lamp. Steve lights the lamp, then asks Bucky to lay a fire in the fireplace, which he does with a practiced hand. They light it, and soon the room is warm enough for them to strip their outer layers of clothing off, shedding rivulets of snow. They hang their outerwear up to dry on hooks by the door and sit in front of the fire, enjoying the heat. 

"This really takes me back," Steve says, surveying the cabin. "When I was a kid, my ma and I used to be real poor. We grew up during the depression, so money was tight for everyone, I guess. When I used to have time off school, instead of going to the theme park or the movies or wherever, we'd go camping. She'd find sites out in the woods for cheap, and we had an Army surplus tent and some sleeping bags. And we'd make our own fires and cook bread-on-a-stick and s'mores. One of the weekends we went on a camping trip, it rained the whole weekend. If we had set foot outside the tent we'd have been soaked to the skin in a second. So we zipped our sleeping bags together into one big sleeping bag and read books to each other all weekend. We only left the tent to cook. I was so happy to spend time with her."

"Didn't you see her much?"

"No, she worked double shifts at the hospital half the time just to put food on the table. And when she wasn't working she was cooking or sleeping. When money's tight, time's tight."

"What about your dad?"

Steve shrugs. "Not in the picture.

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's fine. My mom and I were close. We were more than enough family." He smiles fondly. 

They spend some time drying out, then eat. Steve goes to wash up in the bathroom, which has running water though it's unheated. He wants to shave before they meet with Erdei, but when he goes through the cupboards he only finds a straight razor, a brush, and a mug of soap. He flips the razor open and tests the blade; it's sharp, but he's never used one before. He puts it back, then jumps about a foot in the air when Bucky speaks from right behind him.

"Want help?"

"With...?" Steve asks, trying to pretend he didn't just emit the least mature squeaking noise possible. He really needs to remember to close doors around Bucky. The man has no compunctions about coming up behind Steve silently in common areas of the house, but usually will respect a closed door.

"That." He nods towards the razor. "I know how to use them. Learned in the army."

Steve considers this. He does prefer to be clean-shaven. "Sure, if you're okay with it."

Bucky raises his eyebrows, as if surprised that Steve took him up on his offer, and for a second Steve wonders if he should rescind his agreement, but Bucky is already guiding him over to sit on the closed toilet seat. The bathroom is tiny, like a little stub of a hallway capped by a shower with just the toilet next to a small sink, and Bucky can hardly get farther than arm's length from Steve. It doesn't seem to bother him. He takes a cloth from a towel rack behind him and wets it and the brush in the sink, then kneels in front of Steve. "Take your shirt off. I don't want to get you wet."

Steve pulls his undershirt off and lets it fall to the floor beside them. Bucky wets his face, lathers the brush, and paints him with soap, then flips open the straight razor. He considers it for a second, testing it against his thumbnail, then, apparently satisfied, leans up to Steve and starts shaving him. He works holding the razor in his metal hand, probably, Steve surmises, because it doesn't seem as badly affected by his tremor as his right is. He braces is right hand against Steve's bare left shoulder as he works, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. 

Steve closes his eyes after a minute. Bucky's face is distracting.

He finishes the first pass and goes for a second, but hesitates before he brings the razor up, gaze catching on the edge of the blade.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Steve asks.

He glances up. "I was just thinking about... weaponry."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't talk, or I'll nick you," Bucky says, bringing the blade to Steve's face again. "Hydra taught me to see everything as a weapon. Things with blades, sure, but... one of the first things I noticed in your house were the iron fireplace tools, because they'd make good blunt weapons. But since I started living with you, it's like... I'm remembering that these things have other uses. I don't see a blade like this" -- he holds up the razor -- "and just think 'weapon' anymore. It has... other meanings."

Steve hums affirmatively, obeying the admonition not to speak, but he's smiling with his eyes and he knows Bucky can see it.

"There," Bucky says after working for a few more minutes, "you're done." He rinses Steve off, then hands him a dry towel. "There's no aftershave," he says unhappily. 

Steve laughs. "It's alright. We're out in the middle of nowhere anyway."

When he takes the towel away from his face, Bucky runs his thumb up the underside of Steve's chin, checking his work. Steve shivers before he remembers himself. "Thanks. Do you want to shower?"

"Please," Bucky says.

"I'll leave you to it." He scoops his shirt up off the ground and leaves, Bucky already stripping behind him.

* * *

 

Okay, so he hadn't  _ actually _ expected Steve to take him up on his offer to wield a razorblade right by his neck for ten minutes straight. In their home it might have been no big deal, but holding a knife like that in the middle of a mission had been a challenge.

He braces his hands on his knees and exhales, letting the cold water wash over his back, cooling his overheated skin. He's thankful he'd decided to work with his metal arm rather than the flesh one, because his right arm was shaking violently as the adrenaline left him. He hadn't been able to stop the gory images that had flashed through his mind as he'd been handling the blade. He'd pictured stabbing Steve, of course, because why would he be holding down an unarmed man with a knife in his other hand unless he was supposed to kill him? It was Hydra's training kicking in at an inopportune time -- awful, but understandable. He had also pictured slashing himself, or simply snapping the blade in his hands to make it unusable so he wouldn't be tempted anymore. It had made him so tense he was forced to move his flesh hand from Steve's chest to the sink, lest he feel how badly Bucky was shaking.

But this was a success. He had kept that all inside, kept a straight face, focused on the lines of Steve's jaw and the places where they were in skin contact with each other, where Bucky's legs bracketed Steve's and where he had been touching him with his flesh hand before he had moved it. He had steadied his breathing and pulled out about half the tricks in the toolkit Sam was giving him in therapy, and he had gotten through it. Steve was okay, and he was okay, and that was another tiny piece of Hydra conditioning in the process of being shed.

He doesn't  _ have _ to see Steve as a threat, a handler who could decide to hurt him at any time, and himself as a weapon anymore, he reminds himself. He's allowed to just be a person. No, not  _ just _ a person. A full, whole, valuable person with thoughts and dreams and ideas that have nothing to do with violence. Even on a mission, he can be a person. It's a new and simple luxury, one that he very much enjoys.

The whole experience was also an effective reminder of how stupidly trusting Steve is, which is one of the reasons, Bucky supposes, he's on this mission in the first place, and to that end he needs to get himself together and get back out there with him.

* * *

Bucky is tense as he and Steve prepare to meet with the operative next morning. Steve must have noticed because he keeps telling Bucky it's going to go fine. They sit on the tiny front porch of the cabin to wait for her, watching snow sift down from the branches as it's disturbed by the breeze.

About an hour after sunrise they hear crunching footsteps through the snow. The woman approaches them, bundled in a combination of what looks like surplus military cold-weather gear, including heavy combat boots and a bulky parka, and furs, such as the cloak slung over her back. 

Bucky and Steve rise, and Bucky moves in front of Steve and to his right, between Erdei and Steve. She glances at Steve, reading his face. Then her eyes fix on Bucky. "< _ You> _ ," she hisses in Russian, her eyebrows shooting up.

Bucky sees her plant her feet; she doesn't draw yet, but one of her hands goes to her hip, touching the hilt of a knife. Bucky grips his own combat knife and readies to unsheathe the claws in his arm. "Whoa, whoa," Steve says. He goes to take a step forward, but Bucky flings out his other arm to stop him. He wants to stay between Steve and Erdei. The air hums with tension. "We're with SHIELD," Steve says. "You told my boss we could meet peacefully."

"<The Winter Soldier>," Erdei says, not even sparing Steve a glance. "<We were told you were dead.>"

"<To Hydra, I am>," Bucky promises.

"<I asked SHIELD to send only one agent>." 

"<They sent only one. I am his bodyguard>."

"<And I am supposed to trust you are not a double agent for Hydra?>"

"<Hydra took everything from me, as they did you,>" Bucky snarls. "<I have no loyalty to them anymore.>"

"Buck, English," Steve requests.

Before he can comply, he sees Erdei go for the knife. On instinct, he leaps forward and locks her arm behind her back. Steve shouts sharply in alarm, but by the time he tenses to lunge at them the brief scuffle is over. Bucky holds Erdei's wrist gently. He hasn't hurt her at all yet and doesn't particularly want to. She turns around and glares at him with venom in her eyes. "<You're a killer.>"

"<No. Hydra kills. I am... was... a weapon, as were you. But I don't work for them anymore. Steve is my only master.>"

Her face doesn't change, but she relaxes minutely. After another second goes by, Bucky lets her go. Steve tenses, but Bucky's pretty sure she doesn't really intend to attack. "Will you talk to us?" he asks, switching back to English.

She nods, her upper lip curled in disgust. 

Tentatively, Steve sticks out his hand for her to shake and introduces himself. She takes her hand with far less hostility than she applied to Bucky. Bucky considers for a second that perhaps he shouldn't have come, but Steve is safer with him here than without him even if Erdei is more hostile in his presence. 

The tension relaxed, if not broken, the three enter the house. A several-hour interview follows, conducted by Steve; Bucky has been instructed to stand by for this and not say anything, so he stands against one of the walls, watching both their body language carefully. Steve is interested and polite, but Bucky can tell Erdei's obvious aggression put him on edge. He's probably bothered by their exchange in Russian, but it was Erdei who chose to speak so Steve couldn't understand, not Bucky. Erdei is tense. She probably is not used to being in such close proximity to other people after spending so long in the woods. She looks feral, uncomfortable in the domestic environment. Bucky can understand that.

He's surprised and disturbed that Erdei recognized him. He supposes his work for Hydra must, logically, have earned him a reputation; his killings tended to be high-profile, and Hydra marked him with the red star so everyone would know it was the fist of Hydra who had struck if he was seen on security tapes. They would even allow tapes and the occasional live witness to survive his missions, building the legend. But he hadn't realized it was so far-reaching that a rural member of a Hydra satellite group would know him by his face. 

It is strange to be seen as a weapon as he's learning how to  _ not _ be one. He has the sensation of his past and present messily colliding.

He stays attentive until Steve finishes and thanks her. They shake hands briefly. Erdei does not offer Bucky a goodbye as she leaves, which Bucky thinks is just as well. She glares at him on her way out, but doesn't try to attack again. It's a good thing; Bucky didn't want to kill her. 

She did turn out to know the location of a few more Hydra bases of which SHIELD is unaware, so the meeting was a modest success. "Fury will be pleased," Steve opines, flipping shut the notebook where he took down what she had to tell them. "Wanna pack up? If we leave now we can be at the extraction point tomorrow evening. Are you sore or anything? We have enough food to stay another night if you prefer."

"No, I'd rather leave. You?"

"I'm good to go." The two eat quickly and start the long walk back.

* * *

That afternoon, the sky starts to darken. At first Steve thinks night is falling, but then he checks his watch and it's only two in the afternoon. He looks up through the trees. Slate colored clouds, bulging with snow, scud across the sky.

"Storm's blowing in," Steve says.

"I know. Looks bad. We should keep an eye on it.

It starts to snow long after that, and the wind picks up. Whenever a gust blows through, it lifts the snow from the trees and whirls it into the air, further impeding their vision. It's so cold here that the snow is a fine powder, and soon the two are blundering through a fog of snow so thick they can barely see each other, let alone their route. Bucky takes point, claiming he can sense direction even in these conditions.

The shrieking of the wind grows louder and louder. Steve realizes he can't feel his ears or fingertips anymore. Bucky doesn't seem to be flagging at all, but Steve pulls him to a halt, grabbing his arm. He has to yell an inch from Bucky's ear to speak to him. "I think we should set up camp. We won't be able to --"

Then a hard force slams into him. Bucky has  _ thrown _ him bodily backwards into the snow. Steve was caught completely flat-footed and lands awkwardly on his back, the breath rushing out of him.  _ What the hell? _ For a second he marvels at being thrown around like that; he weighs well over 200 pounds and most un-augmented humans can barely move him at all, much less physically toss them.

As he's lying on his back, no less than three bullets buzz by just over his head, followed by a crunching sound and a strangled scream. Not Bucky, thank god.

He struggles to get up in the deep snow and figure out what's happening, but the blizzard is howling in his ears and the snow ruin his vision. "Bucky? What the hell?" Even at a yell, he doubts Bucky can hear him over the wind. He manages to maneuver himself into a crouch and get some air back in his lungs. In front of him, Bucky is crouched in the snow in a strange posture. Through the veil of wind, Steve sees a growing dark patch in the snow to Bucky's side: blood, flowing freely from his leg. Bucky's eyes are cold and he's whipping around to see through the snow, searching for something.

_ Shit.  _ Someone has found them. 

He has barely a second to react before another hostile, a grey blur, streaks out of the trees towards him, bolting almost inhumanly fast through the snow, which kicks up in billowing clouds around them. The hostile strikes out with a shimmering knife and instinctively, still kneeling on the ground, Steve intercepts it with one of the plates of armor in his suit, angling his arm upwards so the blade will hit the outside of his upper arm. The hostile barely breaks stride as the blade impacts, tearing through the fabric on his arm and peeling it away to reveal the metal plate. The man darts back into the snow and is instantly lost to Steve's sight and hearing. He's augmented, but even his senses can't stand up to a blizzard. 

What the hell is going on? This wasn't supposed to be a combat operation. SHIELD doesn't know of any Hydra bases anywhere in the vicinity of the tiny cabin. They're supposed to be alone in the woods. Clearly they have missed something.

"Bucky!" Steve shouts. Bucky has managed to stand at least; his dark uniform doesn't show blood, but the snow around him is crimson and dimpled with it. He doesn't show the pain at all, crouched in a balanced, defensive stance. He's trained on something in the woods that Steve can't see or hear, and it terrifies him into action. He launches himself forward towards whatever Bucky's looking at and intercepts the hostile right before they can reach Bucky. They struggle with each other for a moment. Steve sees the flash of another knife and grabs the hostile's wrist, twisting until they're forced to drop it into the snow, where it's lost almost immediately. Steve tries to force the hostile to the ground, but they manage to pull a gun. Steve disarms them again, this time also shattering the forearm holding the gun, though they manage to get off a shot that clips his shoulder before he can fling the gun away. Steve finally manages to shift his full weight atop the assailant and get them down. He retrieves the knife from the snow and cuts their throat, grimacing as warm blood floods over his hands. He would rather incapacitate the enemies and keep them alive, but he can hear Bucky struggling behind him (or rather, he can hear grunting and the clashing of metal against metal -- Bucky himself is silent). There's no time for mercy or subtlety. 

The death throes of the hostile in front of him -- a Hydra agent, judging by the insignia on the jacket -- send gouts of blood spurting across the snow. He turns. Bucky is locked in close, furious combat with another enemy, metal flashing from both sides. With the weird time-dilation that comes from the adrenaline of combat, Steve sees the razor-sharp claws glinting from Bucky's metal arm, the matching slashes across his assailant's face.

Steve moves in to help Bucky, but before he can reach them through the deep snow, Bucky snaps the hostile's neck. Steve winces. No matter how many times he sees it, the sight of a person's spine breaking is just as horrifying as it was the first time.

He thinks the fight is over, but Bucky's head cocks and he jogs, limping, through the snow away from Steve. As Steve follows him, a single shot rings out, followed by two more. Then Bucky is upon the unseen sniper in the woods. Steve can't see the details of the fight, but he can tell that Bucky ends him efficiently, then stumbles back towards Steve. 

"That was the last one," he says. There are about six Hydra agents, all dead, sprawled in the snow around them; Steve didn't even lay eyes on a few of them before Bucky killed them. The snow and ice are churned to pink slush. Bucky wipes his blood-soaked gloves on the back of his pants. His eyes are cold, his posture relaxed, yet alert. It's like seeing a cat watching a bird through a window. It puts Steve a little on edge. He knows Bucky as a sensitive person, a little standoffish but warm in his own way. The man standing in front of him projects none of that. He looks capable, calm, and violent.

His voice is strained, though, his calm demeanor unable to cover up the edginess underneath. As Steve walks the last few steps towards him, he sees that Bucky is favoring one of his legs heavily. "You're hurt."

He glances down at himself. Blood is still running down the inside of his legs, alarmingly bright. "Still at combat capacity."

"You're not. Where are you injured?"

"Right arm, shallow cut. Left leg, stab wound, right here." He points to his upper inner leg, dangerously close to an artery. "Right leg, blunt force. Think the shin is fractured. The fibula, I'd guess."

"Shit. Let me help you down."

"No, I'm still functional," Bucky says, pushing Steve back as he tries to move closer. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Bullet clipped my shoulder, but it's shallow." Bucky drags Steve closer to see it, and grimaces at the short gash, but seems satisfied that it's just a flesh wound. "We should get out of here. This wasn't supposed to be a combat operation. We need backup."

"No. We need to take out the base."

"The base?" Steve has to step closer to talk to him above the blizzard.

"Those guys came from somewhere. They have a base, a hideout. We need to clear it before we hike out."

"Jesus, Bucky. You're not gonna make it back in this weather. You'll bleed out. We have Tony's radio beacon; we can call him and have the Avengers take care of wherever these assholes came from."

"If we wait Hydra will get away, and they'll burn all their plans and formulas to ash before we can get them. And that might not be all of them -- they'll probably attack again anyway before Tony can get here. We can take out the Hydra base and  _ then _ go back. We're not safe 'til they're dead."

"No. I'm not risking you dying of hypothermia and blood loss. It's too damn cold out here." The snow is starting to slacken off, but the wind is still bitter. "I'm not gonna let you just bleed out here for an entire day while we run out of food and I do nothing. There's not even supposed to be a base out here. All our intel said the whole forest should be clean."

"The intel was wrong," Bucky snaps. "They weren't dropped from an aircraft; none of them are wearing the gear for that. No chutes or masks. And there's no way they drove this deep into the forest. Doubtful that they hiked out; this weather would be enough to stop regular humans. There's a base."

They glare at each other for a few seconds. Well, Bucky glares; Steve just frowns at him.

"Let me at least start tracking them down," Bucky proposes, "And I'll tell you when I want you to do the beacon. Hydra's coming after me, Steve. I'd rather strike back than... than let them hurt me again."

Steve narrows his eyes. Truth be told, he doesn't know enough about Bucky's healing factor to confidently call his bluff on this one. He might really not need medical attention, for all Steve knows. And the way Bucky just put it, he's afraid that if he doesn't let Bucky go after them, Bucky will think he's siding with Hydra.

He can probably trust Bucky to tell him if he can't go on any longer, and the closer they can get to the Hydra base, the better a lead the rest of the team can get on it. And Bucky has a point. If they leave the base for too long, Hydra will destroy everything inside it. It could contain the locations of other outposts, chemical weapons for which Tony can find an antidote, any number of useful things.

"Okay," Steve says, "Okay. We can keep going. Let me dress your wound first."

"Fine." Bucky has gotten a hand wrapped around his inner leg, putting pressure on the stab wound. He shifts his weight as Steve comes closer and Steve somehow hears the tiny hiss he lets out over the dying wind. Despite the energy of his speech and the frigid light in his eyes, Bucky also looks exhausted, his damp hair hanging over his face. Steve knows, though, that once Bucky's committed to something there's no stopping him. He'll give up on whatever task he decides on when he's good and ready -- likely when his body gives out, or if Steve actually gives him an order and forces him to stop. Still, it pains Steve to see him pushing through such obvious pain.

Steve lowers Bucky to the ground, helping him keep pressure on the wound, and pushes the snow out of the way to make a little hollow he can work in. He slashes the fabric around the wound with a utility knife and pulls it open so he can see Bucky's skin. He digs out rubbing alcohol and a cloth, then nudges Bucky's hand away. The cut is only about two or three inches long, but deep and already welling thickly with blood. "This is gonna sting. You want to bite down on something? Squeeze my hand?" 

Bucky shakes his head to biting down on something, but takes hold of Steve's left hand. 

Steve douses the cloth in frigid alcohol, then swipes it over the cut. He presses the soaked cloth to the wound and gently cleans it out, wincing at the sickening feeling of the two sides of the deep gash sliding against each other under his fingers. Bucky's hand tenses around his, but he doesn't crush Steve's hand in his fingers or make any noise. When Steve glances up, Bucky's gone pale. He finishes quickly and waits a second for the alcohol to dry; the blood is already running out again. He butterfly bandages the cut as best he can and pads the whole thing with gauze, wrapping it tightly. "That feel okay?"

Bucky nods. Steve can tell he's forcing himself to breathe regularly. He winces sympathetically. "Want some morphine or something? I've got some good painkillers in here that'll work on us."

"No," he says grimly. "I want to be able to feel it if the bandages come off."

Steve grimaces. "Okay. Do you want to lean on me while we walk?"

"I'm fine," Bucky snaps. Then he softens. He braces his hands on one thigh. "Sorry. I just... I can't let them get to me again. And I don't want to run from them. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I _need_ to do this."

"It's alright," Steve says. He helps Bucky up, then pulls him close for a moment. The embrace is awkward thanks to all the gear each of them are wearing, but they both relax fractionally. He lets Bucky go and gestures out into the snow. "Lead on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Steve and Bucky reach the cabin and conference with Erdei. She recognizes Bucky as the Winter Soldier and is suspicious of him, but after a few tense moments she agrees to talk to Steve and gives him the location of a few Hydra bases. On the way back from the cabin Steve and Bucky are ambushed by several Hydra operatives in a snowstorm. Steve and Bucky are both hurt, Bucky more severely, but he insists on trying to track down the Hydra base with Steve before they call in Tony to pick them up.


	16. Tracking Them Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They finish the mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to update this fic frequently (hopefully daily) for the next week-ish -- I'm having a medical thing done a week from now and probably won't be able to write at all for a few days after that , so I'm hoping to be able to finish posting this before that happens, but we'll see. Anyway, I have a lot of free time since school ended so I'm making the most of it!
> 
> Thanks as usual for your life-giving comments, I wish you could see the ridiculous smile I make when I read them <3
> 
> Content warnings: Canon-typical violence, non-graphic vomiting.

Bucky reorients himself in his snow, studying the patterns of disturbance. The brief snowstorm has blown over, but the wind is still high, quickly erasing the tracks the Hydra agents left. He scents the air. Hydra taught him to track using all his senses; even his sense of smell is enhanced to the point where, in still air, he can follow someone for miles on their scent alone. On a windy day scents are mixed into meaningless chaos pretty quickly, but he can still get a good idea of which direction the Hydra agents came from -- and it looks like one or two might have escaped using the same trail. Once he zeroes in on it, he can see other signs. They stand out as if highlighted: broken twigs, packed snow under the fresh layer that has just fallen, fibers clinging to rough tree bark, broken-off icicles. He plunges forward into the snow, tracking doggedly at a steady pace.

He's still functional, but dull and unsteady, hindered by his wounds. On the hike out to the cabin, he noticed every sparkling snowflake, the icicles dripping like Christmas decorations (though what does he know of those? he barely remembers Christmas) from the gnarled and wind-blown pines, the crispness of the air and wisps of cloud carded across the sky. But now most of his attention is focused on ignoring the pulse of pain from the stab wound in his leg. It seems unusually distracting. It's all he can do to keep moving in the right direction, picking up on the bare minimum of signs to point him in the right direction. Both of his legs hurt with different varieties of pain. The fracture in his right is a dull ache when his weight is off it, but it intensifies to a roar when he puts weight on that foot. The stab wound, on the other hand, stings and sears with his movement. He ends up favoring the right, but as a result he can feel that his left leg is still bleeding quickly, the movement and stress preventing the cut from closing.

He already feels lightheaded, thirsty, and slightly sick. Even the serum's healing factor can't keep up with the amount of blood he's losing. But the wound should start to seal within ten minutes even if he keeps walking. In two or three hours he'll be out of the woods.

And he's happy he was able to protect Steve. The knife was meant for him, but Bucky managed to throw him out of the way fast enough that he wasn't hit, though Bucky took the hit himself. It's weird: when he fought for Hydra, he saw himself as a weapon, as a tool. He had to view himself as an object, to dissociate, because any thoughts of his own, or empathy, or conscience, would have interfered with his mission. With Steve, he can fight as himself. He cares about Steve and those feelings drive his attacks. When the fight ends, he doesn't feel lost and alone; he feels proud, relieved.

For the first ten minutes of walking, occasionally scooping a handful of snow into his mouth to cool down and replace the fluids he's losing, adrenaline chases away his exhaustion and blunts the pain a little. Despite the fact that neither of them were seriously hurt, he and Steve are both on edge. "What was Hydra doing out here? How did they find us?" he asks in a strained voice, trying to keep himself and Steve focused on the mission.

"Not sure. It could be that they were looking for Erdei, since she's sharing information with SHIELD, and ran into us by accident. But if they were going after her, I don't think they would spontaneously decide to attack us as well. She's not augmented, so the equipment needs would be completely different."

"You think it was personal."

"I doubt it was a coincidence that they showed up at our house last month."

"How did they know we were here, though?"

"That's bothering me, too." Steve knows that Bucky is too smart to ever allow a bug in the house. He can actually hear the high-pitched whine of some tiny electronics working, and besides that he sweeps the whole house -- including all of Steve's clothing -- while Steve's working, and sometimes while Steve sleeps. (Bucky thinks Steve doesn't know how he patrols at night when he can't sleep, but Steve is well aware.) If there was a bug Bucky would have obliterated it within a day or two. The chances that Hydra could have picked up their mission are low. That said, there  _ was _ the issue with the keylogger on Steve's computer a while back. "There could be a mole in SHIELD. It's a big organization; one has been known to slip through the cracks from time to time, though I hate to think about that. Are you still doing okay?"

"Fine."

A flush of heat passes through Bucky. It comes on so abruptly he scrambles to pull the balaclava away from his face, almost tearing it with his prosthetic. He takes off his gloves. His hands are red, the veins standing out, and he's beginning to break out in a cold sweat. He resists the urge to take his jacket off. The healing process is always uncomfortable, forcing Bucky's immune system and already-fast metabolism into overdrive. It usually feels like a mild fever. Hydra taught him to anticipate its effects on him, cutting and burning him so he'd grow familiar with pain and healing: first the pain of the injury, then the intense heat and prickling sensation of his body kicking up a gear, the rise and fall of swelling from contusions and fractures, the itching and ache of his body knitting back together, the fug of exhaustion it leaves him in afterwards.

Still, he keeps tracking. He's been walking for over an hour now, and the tracks are getting fresher. He thinks they'll catch them within the day.

* * *

 

Five minutes later, they run into another lone agent in the woods.

It's snowing again, so they don't see her until they're only about twenty feet away. Actually, Bucky still doesn't notice her -- it's Steve who yells "Get down!", and they both hit the ground as something flies over their head.

It's a grenade.

Why the Hydra agent is using grenades at this close a range, Bucky has no idea. Either way, he scrambles backwards, Steve shouting behind him, pulls it out of the snow, cocks his arm, and manages to fling it about twenty meters away before it goes off. 

The crack is deafening and he hears Steve grunt behind him as the sound impacts them like a physical force -- it was a flashbang. Steve was facing the agent when it went off, but Bucky is thoroughly blinded, his ears ringing, and for a second he can't tell which way is up or down, the concussive force reverberating through him. He was lucky he got the grenade a little farther away; the sensitivity of his senses means he's more susceptible to sound and light than the average human, and the agent probably knew that and was trying to use it against him. At least he recovers from it faster as well. He manages to get halfway to his feet, trying to get back to Steve, but stumbles backwards and falls sideways into the snow; then Steve's hands are on him, pulling him closer. "She dead?" Bucky slurs, turning over awkwardly onto his front. 

"Got her. Don't worry. I think she was the only one. You good?" Steve's voice sounds tinny and very far away.

"Yeah, just... give me a second." He realizes his eyes are closed; when he opens them the afternoon light looks like dusk, but he's already starting to readjust. He covers his ears instinctively; they sting and his hearing is muffled, but the damage doesn't feel serious. "Are you?"

"I can't really hear, but I'll be okay in a minute. I can lip-read. Do you want to take a break?"

"Just for a second." They pass a canteen of water back and forth as they both get their bearings. The vertigo, at least, is receding, Bucky gets to his feet again, careful not to stagger. He's not sure if he pulled the cut on his leg open again or if it never sealed up; it feels hot and swollen under his tac suit. But he can still move, so they head back out into the snow, leaving the Hydra agent's body to freeze. They lean on each other, staying close, until their vision and balance recover; then they separate, Bucky taking point again.

* * *

 

 

Fifteen minutes after that is when he first seriously considers the possibility that something is wrong. Usually the fever of the serum kicking in spikes quickly, within as little as five or ten minutes after the injury, then begins to fade. He's been tracking the time and it's been over an hour and a half since he was hurt, and he's only feeling worse over time. Even an injury this severe shouldn't provoke a reaction like this. Hot and cold flashes alternately soak him in sweat and freeze it on his face and hands. His wound prickles and burns, and he feels weak, far weaker than healing usually makes him.

He's been trying to deny it so that he can go in and kill all the Hydra agents before he collapses, but it feels an  _ awful _ lot like he's been poisoned. Unless he's just going soft. He's out of practice at healing, or he's psychologically weak and isn't withstanding the pain like he normally does.

He trudges through the snow on autopilot for a minute as he assesses his body. The pain from the fracture is fading, but the stab wound stings as much as it did before he yanked the knife out. In fact, he thinks it's starting to feel worse. He presses on it experimentally through the gauze with his metal fingers.

That's a fatal mistake. The pain is like being struck by lightning.

He hears himself hiss and vision whites out for a split second. When he comes back, Steve is rushing towards him.

 

* * *

 

Bucky steps back unsteadily as Steve reaches for him, but he doesn't fall. Steve closes the gap between them and takes him by the shoulders, helping him to the ground. Now that he's caught up to him, he sees that the gauze over Bucky's wound is saturated with blood. His eyes are rolling with pain, his face misted with sweat, and he's almost as pale as the snow. "Don' feel so good, Stevie."

"Why didn't you say anything? What's wrong?"

"I'm so hot." He pulls at his collar. "The stab still hurts. The healing factor isn't working," he say sluggishly. "It shouldn't still be bleeding. I just... I don't think I can get up."

"It's alright. No, don't do that." He removes Bucky's hand from where it tugs at the zipper of his jacket. "You'll freeze to death. I know you're hot, but you have to keep that on. I'm just gonna go to that clearing and call Tony to come get us. You stay put. Do not stand up. That's an order. Don't move."

"Wanna finish the mission," Bucky says pitifully.

"We're done already, Buck. You did great, but we're definitely finished here. Don't move, I'm serious."

He rushes to a clearing nearby sends the transmission to Tony as fast as possible and presses the button to send him their coordinates. They're going to blow Erdei's cover, but if Hydra's here she has to be relocated anyway. All Steve is doing right now is damage control. The first priority is getting Bucky out alive. Everything else is secondary. Why didn't he realize how badly Bucky was injured?

He leaves the radio beacon in the clearing and sprints back to where Bucky is propped up against the tree. He's not moving; his eyes are closed and his head lolled to one side. Steve can see his breath coming shallow and quick. "Hey, Buck. Wake up, honey." Steve kneels beside him. "Stay with me. Tony's on his way. You're doing great. Just hang on and he'll be here soon." Steve has no idea how long Tony's going to take. He grabs Bucky's prosthetic shoulder and squeezes, and finally Bucky's eyelashes flutter. He looks up at Steve, brow furrowed.

"Where...? Never mind," he says, seeming to get his bearings. He sucks in a labored breath. "It's poison."

"You... you think they poisoned you?"

Bucky nods. "I know they did. I've felt it before. Burns. All around the cut. It's a special poison, for supersoldiers. For me."

"Before? When did you feel it before?"

"Hydra. They tested it on me. Dosed me with it on a mission. Then again, in the lab, small doses, big doses..."

"What's the antidote?"

Bucky shakes his head. "Dunno. It doesn't kill, just stops the healing factor. At Hydra I just waited it out."

"God, I can't believe they'd do that to you," Steve blurts out before he realizes how inappropriate it is for him to be expressing his own reaction to what happened to Bucky right now. With the depth of his wound and its close proximity to his femoral artery, the poison might not have to act directly to kill Bucky -- if his healing factor can't close the wound, he might bleed out. "What should I do? Tell me what you need."

"Water." He paws his balaclava back down with his un-hurt arm. Though Bucky's reclining against the tree, tendons and muscles stand out on it, twitching. His muscles are spasming. 

Steve scrambles the canteen from his backpack and holds it to Bucky's lips. He takes a few sips, a rivulet running from the corner of his mouth, and coughs once breathlessly. "I just wanna rest," he says when he's done.

"I don't think it's a good idea for you to sleep." Actually Steve has no idea if it's a good idea or not. He's just scared of seeing Bucky motionless with his eyes closed right now.

"Then talk to me," Bucky demands.

* * *

Bucky has no idea what the fuck they talk about after he asks Steve that. He says whatever the first thing that comes to mind is whenever Steve addresses him and immediately forgets the exchange. Steve starts by asking his about his favorite color (turquoise) and why (it's calm),  his favorite type of animal (a rhinoceros, because if he was a rhino he wouldn't have to be afraid of anything). He asks him to find rhymes for a whole bunch of words, but quickly trashes that idea when Bucky can only think of weapons that Steve has never heard of before. He's starting to slur, to drift in and out of disturbing fever dreams. To keep himself up he grips his right shoulder hard with his metal hand, starting to sink his claws in. Steve winces and pulls his hand away. Bucky could easily overpower him with the prosthetic, but he lets Steve stop him. Is this some kind of test? Is he supposed to stay awake without any of the tricks he's figured out, ways of forcing his body to release adrenaline? He keeps forgetting who Steve is and why he's in the woods in the first place.

Steve tells him to list words starting with the letter "R", which lasts for a few minutes before Bucky gives up. He watches snowflakes swirling dizzily above them, then stares at Steve's eyes for a while. He asks Bucky to count in twos with him. Steve will say "two", then Bucky is supposed to say "four", Steve "six", and so on. Bucky keeps forgetting his turn and saying nothing, or saying Steve's number, or saying the next number sequentially instead of by twos. After he says seven after six for the third time in the row, his eyes tear up. He tries to get up, but Steve pins him in place, gently, with his forearm across Bucky's collarbones. "Stevie, please..." He doesn't know what he's begging for. His whole left leg hurts; it feels swollen, filled with fluid. 

Once or twice he retches and brings up water into the snow. Steve helps him lean over, wipes saliva off his chin with his free hand.

Something terrible is going to happen to him if he keeps failing Steve's challenges, something probably involving blood, or knives, burning, going without sleep for days, starvation... 

Steve seems alarmed by Bucky's disobedience rather than angry, which is one of the things that reminds him that Steve actually is not his handler. He keeps feeling Bucky's forehead with his cool hand, and though he doesn't say anything he clearly doesn't like what he finds. He's also been keeping steady pressure on the inside of Bucky's leg this whole time. He can't quite remember how he got the wound, though he knows it was recent and he shouldn't have forgotten. Steve lets up the pressure for a second, and immediately Bucky can feel warm blood pouring into the bandage. Steve hisses and puts his hand back. "God," he mutters to himself, "That really doesn't look good." To Bucky he adds, "Tony will be here soon, okay? Just hang on." He's worrying his lip between his teeth like he does when he's anxious.

"Stevie, it's okay," Bucky says. Steve tells him again that he's doing real good.

Bucky's handler never tells him he's doing real good. If she had been here in the woods with him, she wouldn't have come up with ways to keep Bucky awake. She probably wouldn't have put pressure on his wound; she would have bound it tightly and left him in the snow to wait for the flesh to painfully knit back together. Bucky doesn't know what to make, in his feverish haze, of Steve hovering over him nervously, touching him, rubbing his shoulders to soothe the corded muscles the poison won't let him relax. He feels safe. He hears his voice saying, as though from another room, "S'eve. Steve. You know I... I need you. I think I love you." The last of the snow is letting up, blurry snowflakes melting on his tac suit. Steve swipes the sweat from Bucky's forehead, saying words Bucky can't understand. Bucky's vision swirls, then cuts out. He thinks his eyes have fallen closed, but there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it. He's supposed to be staying awake, he remembers sluggishly, but he can't recall way, and at any rate he can't wake himself up, he's too close to being completely asleep. 

Then for a while there is nothing.

 

* * *

"Bucky. Bucky. Buck, wake up. Bucky!  _ Fuck! _ " Bucky's head is lolled over to one side. His eyes fluttered shut just a minute ago, but he's out cold. Steve's heart misses a beat. Tony had better get here soon. Steve isn't sure how much time they have left.

That's the problem with tiny operations like this. The upside is their low profile, and their nimbleness, the ability to change plans, read each other quickly and adjust their tactics on the fly to adapt to the situation as it evolves. The downside is just how quickly everything can go up shit creek. One lucky strike with a poisoned knife and half your team is dying...

_ No _ . Steve can't think that way. They haven't lost yet, and nobody is dead. He still needs to get Bucky out of here. 

He's dizzy and nauseous, and he bends forward over Bucky's legs to keep blood flowing to his head, hand still clamped around his inner thigh. Bucky can't be dying. He just can't. Steve would never,  _ ever _ forgive himself if he lost a man he trusts and respects on a mission. Especially not after what Bucky just said about him. Steve knows the words probably didn't mean what he wishes they meant; anyone would probably say the same thing to someone who was currently keeping them from bleeding out. And having lost as much blood as he has, Bucky's nowhere near his right mind right now. Still, it was exactly what Steve has been wanting to hear, which makes it ten times worse that Bucky is now unresponsive.

He can't stand the deafening silence around them. "It's alright, Bucky," he says, as if he can hear him. Hell, maybe some small conscious part of his brain will be comforted. "Tony's on his way. We'll be out of here in no time. He's probably almost here." He sucks in a shaking breath. "Remember when you first came to my house, when you were so jumpy to say two words in a row to me? We're so close now. I'm so glad. Damnit, Bucky. I..." He laughs, and it comes out like a sob. He uses his free hand to stroke Bucky's hair, damp with fever sweat, back from his face. The heat rolling off Bucky is making  _ him _ sweat. 

The gauze on Bucky's leg is so soaked that when Steve presses down on the wound, rivulets of blood well up around his fingers. He knows he should change the field dressing, but without an extra set of hands to keep steady pressure on it, he's too afraid of the blood loss that will cause.

Steve realizes that he's crying when tears appear on Bucky's uniform. Tony needs to get here faster -- like ten minutes ago faster. 

He's so engrossed in Bucky that he almost doesn't hear the noise from the woods in front of them. His head snaps up as he picks up the shush of snow being pushed aside, and he catches a glimpse of a dark figure disappearing behind a tree. 

Hydra.

He can't even move to defend himself and Bucky. He reaches for the rifle strapped to his pack with his free hand, but he knows his aim one-handed is going to be shit. He won't be able to do anything until Hydra is pretty much on top of them, and at that point it'll probably be too late. If he keeps his hand locked around Bucky's thigh, they'll be able to kill him at range  _ or _ hand-to-hand because of his limited mobility. If he lets go of Bucky he's pretty sure he'll bleed out. He's backed into a corner, completely out of options.

One of the agents darts forward. There are too many of them; Steve can see seven and hear a few more, and there are sounds coming from behind him, too.

He positions himself in front of Bucky, shielding him with his body. "Damn it!" he growls. "If you're gonna die, I'm going with you. I... I can't..."

A shot rings out, splitting the air. 

He feels strangely emotionless as the bullet zings past his forehead. He yanks his head out of the way just in time to dodge it and it slams deep into the bark of the tree behind him with a deafening crack. His ears ring; the muffled snowscape becoming a dreamlike scene with the volume turned all the way down as the force vibrates through him. Dimly he hears another shot go off, and a humming sound that's slowly getting louder, coming from the sky. He looks up. He knows his fate is not his to decide any more. If this is where he is to die, he'd rather do it defending Bucky and looking at the sky than watching his death speed towards him. 

That's the only reason he sees Tony's jet descending in the clearing, about a half-mile away.

The next seconds are pure chaos. Steve takes stock of the ring of Hydra agents converging on him and Bucky, then maps the trajectory of the jet. It looks like it's coming down in the same clearing where Steve put the beacon. He would kill for a radio to coordinate with Tony right now, but he doesn't have that luxury. He scoops Bucky up in a bridal carry, hoisting his dead weight into the air, and starts sprinting for the clearing, clutching Bucky to him so he doesn't hurt him further and trying to stay low as bullets zing past him. Now that the Hydra agents are shooting, they don't stop. The chatter of gunfire is almost continuous. Steve hunches over as he runs in an attempt to make himself a smaller target and zigzags wildly back and forth, which throws off the gunners' aim enough that he avoids most of the bullets.

They're nearing the clearing. Steve's lungs are burning. Even post-serum, sprinting a half-mile with a 200-lb dead weight in his arms after a full day of hiking through knee-deep snow pushes his system to the limit. His vision fuzzes around the edges and his muscles start to seize up, but the clearing is ahead of him now, fading daylight lancing through the trees, illuminating the bright surfaces of the quinjet. He pushes himself forward harder. The jet, now only a few tens of feet above the snow, screams as it comes in to land, obliterating sound. 

Something punches into Steve from behind, knocking the wind out of him; it enters his skin and lodges there. He stumbles, electric nerve pain sparking down one arm and almost causing him to drop Bucky. He latches on even tighter with his other arm. Bucky's blood is coating his hands, literally dripping off his gloves; how can there still be so much blood? The ramp from the jet is lowering in front of them and it touches down just as Steve bursts into the clearing, sweat flying from his hair, his own blood running hot down his back. His boots clang on the walkway and he screams  _ "Go go go go go!"  _ into the dim interior of the plane as he skids inside. A bullet ricochets off the ramp itself and another clips the entryway as the ramp swiftly pulls up behind him and Bucky and bangs shut, leaving them in the dark. Steve falls to his knees with a thump as the jet roars and takes breathlessly to the air, so snow-blinded the interior of the jet is dark as night and filled with stars, and lays Bucky carefully down on the floor in front of him before he collapses sideways to the floor.

Bucky is still breathing. 

Mission success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Bucky and Steve track the Hydra agents who attacked them back to their base, but halfway through Bucky collapses. The knife he was stabbed with was poisoned, and the poison is inhibiting his healing factor and making him sick. He's starting to bleed out. Steve calls for Tony to come retrieve them in the quinjet, and Tony gets there in the nick of time just as Hydra reinforcements show up. Steve and Bucky make it onto the jet, Bucky unconscious and Steve having been shot.


	17. The Flight Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: a bunch of medical stuff & v*miting.

He's still on the floor when he comes to. Tony is crouching in front of him. His face brightens when he sees Steve open his eyes. "Cap! Welcome back to the land of the living. Don't move; the doctors are fixing up your back."

He grunts and almost rolls onto his side to get up before his brain catches up with him. He can feel someone poking around _in_ his back, which is an unpleasant sensation. It also stings like hell. He grits his teeth and hisses as whoever it is draws out a shard of shrapnel. "How long was I out?"

"Like five minutes."

"Bucky --"

"Is being taken care of by the best paramedics money can buy. Was he poisoned?"

"Yeah." Steve grunts. He hisses again when another piece of the bullet comes out. He's laying with his head twisted to the side and he can see the little tray where they're storing the bloody bits of metal. It's not helping.

"Hey, get him some morphine," Tony addresses the paramedic. "Jesus. Yeah, whatever poison it is, it's pretty strong, but it seems like he's working through it. They've got him stabilized, anyway."

"Thank God." Steve doesn't bother to try to conceal his relief. Then he adds, "Morphine doesn't really work on me."

Tony shrugs. "Might help a little." 

Steve rolls his eyes but doesn't protest. "The base...?"  


"We brought a strike team when we got the signal from the emergency beacon. They were airdropped near where we picked you up. I've been in contact with the team leader. They found the base mid-evacuation. It's like a massive concrete iceberg hidden under the snow. They've pretty much cleared it out now, and we only lost one operative to a trapped doorway. They're searching for intel now to see if there are any leads on how they got your location."

Steve nods, then closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing through the pain. Tony sits with him as the doctor finishes up with Steve's back. As soon as the paramedic finishes dressing the wound, Steve pushes himself up.

"Whoa, whoa. Are you sure you want to be standing right now?" Tony says, steadying Steve as he stumbles to his feet.

"I'm fine. Just exhausted. We almost..." He shakes his head. "I want to see Bucky."

"Alright, I'll take you to him. You need some fluids. I can give you an IV or a Gatorade."

"Gatorade. Where is he?" 

"Hold your horses, tiger." Tony, king of the mixed metaphor, opens a panel in the wall of the quinjet and tosses Steve an energy drink -- not actually Gatorade, but one of Bruce's Gatorade-ish supersoldier-optimized formulations, which comes in a pouch that looks morbidly like an IV bag. Steve obediently cracks it and starts drinking as Tony leads him to the tiny medical chamber on the right side of the plane.

Bucky is there, lying on a stretcher, looking at best marginally better than he did when he was laid out in the snow. His eyes are closed. One of his legs is braced straight with a complicated-looking device; on the other, his tac suit is cut away to expose the stab wound, which is livid and stitched shut with harsh black thread.

Steve's knees go weak when he sees him. He's supposed to be inured to the battlefield; he's been in combat on and off for years, decades. He's lost operatives before, and while it's never easy, he's also used to handling that pain and regret. If he allows it to crush him, he won't be able to keep moving, keep fighting for what's good in the world.

But the people he's lost before were operatives he  _ worked _ with. Team members he respected, of course, but knew only as coworkers. He's lived with Bucky in his house for months now, coached him through panic attacks, watched him re-learn his own psyche after what Hydra did to him. He knows how Bucky takes his coffee in the morning, for God's sake. Any objectivity he has goes right out the window when it comes to Bucky. 

"I want to stay with him," Steve says.

"As long as you stay out of their way, knock yourself out," Tony says. Steve goes to the side of the stretcher, on the other side of the medic cleaning the blood around the stab wound. He takes Bucky's hand in both of his, hoping that Bucky wouldn't mind the physical contact if he were awake. The heat of Bucky's hand calms him a little; he can feel Bucky's pulse, weak but regular, in his wrist. 

The paramedics are finishing up when Bucky's eyes open. He looks up at Steve and his brow furrows. He tries to sit up, but Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. "You're still hurt. Stay down. I'm so glad you're awake. You... you scared me." 

Bucky complies a little too readily, bonelessly lying back down. He still hasn't said anything. "Do you remember what happened?" Steve asks.

Bucky closes his eyes, thinking. A minute later he opens them again. "No." 

"We're on the quinjet back from the SHIELD mission."

"Steve," Bucky says suddenly, and his eyes light up; he apparently just recognized him. "What...?"

"You said you wanted to take down the Hydra base before we called Tony, and then you collapsed in the snow. They almost..." Steve sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Hydra almost got to us. I thought... I thought we were going to lose. But the jet came just in time."

"Christ, Steve, 'm sorry." 

"Never do that again," Steve says vehemently. "You can't... if you didn't make it through a mission, I don't think I could live without you. Not anymore."

Bucky's eyes widen, and he squeezes Steve's hand tightly. "Don't say that. Don't. You don't need me."

"Yes, I do. You don't know how much I do."

Bucky runs his thumb over the back of Steve's hand, and Steve shivers. Then his hand goes slack in Steve's, and he flops bonelessly back onto the stretcher. "Steve, I feel kinda..." He turns practically grey, the blood draining from his face, and takes in two labored breaths. Steve thinks he's panicking at first. "Just relax, Bucky. We're safe now. Tony's..."

That's as far as he gets before Bucky passes out, his eyelids fluttering. For a second he's as still as death and Steve's heart almost stops. Then without warning his whole body arches grotesquely into the stretcher. He's shuddering hard, almost hard enough to flip him off the stretcher entirely. The paramedic in the room leaps forward as medical alarms start beeping insistently. "What's happening? What's happening to him?" 

"He's seizing," the paramedic says, half talking to Steve and half to her assistant, who has just entered the room. "His fever's dangerously high. Help me turn him on his side." Steve levers Bucky up with some effort (he's heavier than he looks, particularly because of the arm), which is a good thing because a second later he vomits water and foam onto the floor. 

"Do something," Steve says, "Can't you make it stop?"

"We just have to wait it out." 

It goes on longer than Steve would have thought possible, a full minute at least, and then Bucky mercifully goes limp again, panting like he's just run a marathon. The paramedics check his vitals, then start piling ice packs at his elbows and the backs of his knees.

Steve grips the edge of the stretcher, waiting for him to wake up again, feeling like the entire jet is unstable beneath him.

* * *

"... two minutes, but he's been out for five."

"I think he's coming around."

Pins and needles, all over his body, his nerves painfully waking up again, like when he would come out of cryo. Like cryo, there's ice on his skin, encrusting him. He tries to move to dislodge it but only manages a weak twitch of his flesh arm. His metal arm moves, too -- his proprioception on that side isn't that good when he can't see it, so he can't tell exactly what it does. 

His mouth tastes acrid and electric. His ears are roaring, or something is roaring outside, or possibly both. And a face is hanging over him. For a second he doesn't recognize it; then he realizes it's Steve, who was there the last time he woke up. Some fragments of memory come back to him -- the tail end of the mission, a long time skip, waking up on the jet the first time. Steve's hand cups his shoulder. He lets his eyes fall shut again. He's inhumanly tired, more exhausted than the serum usually lets him feel.

"Feeling any better, Bucky?" He can hear Steve frowning.

He shakes his head no minutely, making the world dive vertiginously. He's dizzy, nauseated. His leg burns; he can feel where stitches have been put in, and his other leg feels swollen and stiff, locked into some kind of restraint or brace. He can also feel the touch of a painkiller dulling his senses, thankfully. It's not a very familiar feeling; Hydra never gave him anything to dull pain. Pain is information, and he knows he's supposed to accept it, to learn from it, but right now he's relieved to have a tiny bit of relief.

"Just hang on for a second. The doctor's gonna take your temperature."

He tries to sit up, gets as far as lifting his head before Steve eases him back down. "Lie still, Bucky. You're real sick." There's that informal Brooklyn accent that only comes out when Steve is scared. Steve is always stupid enough to be scared about Bucky. He shoudn't bother. Bucky's like a cockroach; he's pretty much unkillable. He'll be in operation-ready condition in a few hours time, a day on the outside. 

Something cold enters his ear, and he shivers. There's a loud click and someone saying, "104.5. It's dropping. Slowly." 

"Nnh." He wants to tell Steve that he's still functional, or will be soon, but he finds himself too weak to even talk. Probably the painkillers. If they take him off them now, they'll be out of his system in an hour and he'll be useful again. He wishes someone would give him water. There's the cold drip of fluids into his arm, but his mouth is as parched as a salt flat. 

"I'm so happy you're okay," Steve says. He squeezes Bucky's shoulder. "We're almost back at the tower. Another half hour."

"Water," Bucky finally manages. Some fumbling around ensues and someone holds a water bottle to his mouth so he can drink. As soon as he's had a few sips he asks, "Am I gonna be punished?"

"For what?"

He motions at his leg. "Damaging the tac suit. Damaging the weapon." He's the weapon. Steve doesn't like it when he talks about himself like that, he remembers. But he still slips up and thinks of himself that way, in the new privacy of his mind.

"This ain't Hydra, Buck. Nobody's gonna court-martial you for saving my life. That knife was meant for me." When Steve inhales, Bucky hears his breath shudder. He's been crying recently, or is about to; that's Steve's tell. "That mission went to shit, I'll admit that. But none of it was your fault. It was supposed to be a noncombat op. I  _ told _ Fury to give us something noncombat."

That's right. Not Hydra, so he's not going to be hurt. 

He tries to go back to sleep but it quickly becomes evident that's not going to be an option. "Steve, I... I don't feel good."

"I know, I know. Do you need more painkillers? I can..."

"No, gonna be sick," he chokes out. He turns to the side, and that's about as far as he gets before something hot and wet is in his throat and then he's vomiting over the side of the table he's laid out on. He struggles to breathe as he throws up. He hates this; he knows it's his body trying to clear the toxin, but he also know the toxin's in his  _ blood _ , not his stomach, and his useless nervous system just can't tell the difference. His broken leg clenches like a squeezing fist as he heaves. It's incredibly painful.

But Steve is holding his hair back, steadying him as he gasps and heaves, coughing out the last of it. He shudders, ashamed and disgusted as he lays back down, relieved that Steve is here with him and terrified that he'll leave. Puking exhausts him and he finds himself struggling to stay awake. It's the damn drugs. He should ask them to turn the drugs off. "Aw, Buck," Steve is saying and he's wiping vomit off Bucky's jaw with a wet cloth. Everything is disjointed, sights and sounds crashing into each other and blurring together. "Sorry, sorry," he gasps, too disoriented to be particularly ashamed, though he's sure he won't be proud of this later.

"Stop apologizing." 

"But I..."

"No buts. I know what you're thinking, that you're inconveniencing us," Steve says, accurately enough. "You're not an investment, Bucky. Medical care is a  _ right _ you have because you're a damn  _ human being _ . You're a human, and my friend. I'd pay anything, Tony would pay anything, for you to be okay."

"I..." Bucky starts again, looking up at Steve and feeling like he's overflowing with love. "Thank you. For staying with me."

"You know I care about you," he says quietly, blushing. "I wouldn't leave you alone. But you need to sleep. You're on a  _lot_ of painkillers right now. We're gonna land in two hours, so try to get some rest."

* * *

 

Steve is awoken by a heavy thump.

He jerks up beside Bucky's bed in the med wing of the tower, sleep instantly leaving him. The first thing he notices is that the bed is empty. A heart monitor is still beeping steadily, so he doesn't panic right away. The thin blankets, smelling of disinfectant, are all dragged halfway off the opposite side of the bed. He picks up on Bucky's labored breathing and hurries to the other side of the bed.

Bucky kneels on the floor, sluggishly trying to disengage himself from a tangle of blankets. Steve is relieved to see the blood oxygen clip still clamped to his finger, the IV line taped into the crook of his arm. His lank hair flops over his face as he tries to stand, hindered by the splint holding his leg straight.

"Yeah, I don't think you're quite ready to be out of bed yet." Steve kneels to help Bucky up. They've only been off the quinjet for a few hours, judging by the light in the window, but Bucky has been asleep since halfway through the flight. Bruce got started on testing Bucky's blood practically as soon as the jet landed, and reported back before Steve fell asleep that although he was able to isolate the poison from Bucky's blood, the concentration was low -- it was already mostly out of his system. The lab is working on an antidote now, but it won't be ready soon enough to be useful to him. He just has to wait out the aftereffects.

"But I have to debrief," Bucky complains.

"No, you don't. You're still drugged to the gills. Nothing you say right now would be admissible to the record. Let me get you back in bed."

"But I'm functional. Take me off the drugs and I'll be ready to report."

"Fury hasn't even called us in for the debrief yet."

"Hm?"

"Do you remember what's going on?" Steve asks, mentally backing up a step. "We just got off the quinjet from the intel mission with Erdei about... three hours ago," he says, checking the wall clock. "We're at Stark tower now, in the medical center."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I remember. But I thought they'd want me to debrief right away, since..."

"No, they'll probably call you in when you're recovered. Want to get back in bed?"

"I can do it." Steve notices that Bucky uses his metal arm to lever himself back to his feet, relying on its mechanical strength, but he doesn't say anything. 

"Are _you_ okay?" Bucky asks him as soon as he's situated. "What happened to you?"

"After you passed out? Nothing. You found the base, I'll give you that. They almost got to us before Tony's jet did." Steve can talk about it a little more calmly since he's already gone over the details with Tony. Apparently, while Steve was passed out on the jet, Tony called in a strike team, and by now they've cleared out the base. They were able to round up most of the weapons and personnel, and the ones who escaped into the forest are stranded in the middle of nowhere anyway. 

"Were you hurt?" 

"Not really." He shrugs. "I was shot in the back, but it's fine now."

"In the  _ back _ ?" Bucky yelps.

Steve's mouth twists up. "You took the worst of it."

"Christ. Did they fix it? Does it hurt? Did you sleep?"

Steve laughs nervously. "It's fine, Buck. They picked the shrapnel out and it's covered. It doesn't hurt anymore." Actually it kind of aches, but not as badly as it did before, and Steve knows it will heal. He took a couple other grazes from bullets, but Bucky can hear about those in the mission report. "And I was sleeping a minute ago, until you decided to walk down to be debriefed with a line in your arm."

"But you didn't sleep on the jet?"

"You were in kinda bad shape, Buck. I wasn't about to sleep while you were that sick. I was worried."

"You shouldn't be. You don't have to worry about me."

"Yes, I do. I know you have the serum, but you're human. I know it still hurts to be wounded, and it's scary as hell. Just because you're not gonna die doesn't mean the pain is unimportant."

Bucky stares up at Steve in unguarded surprise. At times like these Steve can practically see the gears working in Bucky's head as something he learned with Hydra is challenged.  "Well, anyway, if you've been up this whole time you need to sleep," he says, changing the subject. "Get the nurse to find you a bed. And to take me off the drugs."

"They're not gonna find me a bed. The nurses have more important stuff to worry about."

"Then get up here with me," Bucky offers easily.

Steve hesitates. "It'll be kinda cramped."

"No worse than the tent."

He crawls up beside Bucky tentatively, trying to avoid the blood oxygen monitor, the electrodes stuck to his chest (some kind of EKG?), and the line of fluids in his flesh arm. He finally manages to curl up next to Bucky, who shifts over to make room. As soon as he lies down he feels himself start to drift off, the exhaustion of the last few days bowling him over. Bucky's bodyheat, amplified by his low fever, doesn't help matters at all. "This okay?" he slurs, trying to keep his eyes open. "You comfortable enough?"

"It's fine. Sleep."

Steve is out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: Steve wakes up on the quinjet with a paramedic pulling bullet shards out of his back. He recovers pretty quickly and goes to see Bucky, who's still fighting the poison; it's touch and go for a while as his fever spikes but he makes it through the flight and wakes up in the hospital with an exhausted Steve; he orders Steve into his bed (lol) and they fall asleep together.


	18. The Dam Breaks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost done! The last few chapters are shorter as things start to wrap up. This is probably a bad time to admit it but I'm not entirely sure of the chapter count; I think there are supposed to be 3 left but one might get cut!

Bucky wakes before Steve. Some of the fuzziness has receded; he's clearer and more alert than he was the last time he woke up. He thinks his fever is probably down, his ridiculous metabolism almost done processing the poison. He's in a white bed, in a sterile-smelling room, with a needle in his arm, so he must be in a hospital or a lab. For a second he thinks it might be Hydra -- the situation resembles how they used to prep him for cryo -- but then he catches sight of the other man in the bed and remembers.

Steve is curled up on the edge of the bed, somehow managing not to fall off despite how ridiculously big he is, with his face buried in the pillow, his hair tickling Bucky's cheek. His eyelashes are surprisingly dark, a sharp contrast with his skin where they fan across his cheekbone. One of his hands is curled up by his face and the other rests on Bucky's side. He's breathing slowly, sound asleep.

Bucky stares for a minute. He thinks he remembers inviting Steve up here. He's not sure how to feel about that.

Maneuvering carefully around Steve (whether or not it was a good idea for Bucky to invite him into his bed or not, now that he's here he doesn't care to wake him up) he reaches down under the blankets to probe his inner leg where he was stabbed. The wound has finally sealed shut and scabbed over, which means the poison is mostly out of his system. It still hurts, but it's a light sting rather than the dull throb it had been yesterday. A row of dry, scratchy stitches is embedded in his skin. He resists the urge to pick them out. The one downside to the healing factor is that his body has an annoying tendency to heal up around stitches instead of rejecting them; they take forever to fall out.

His throat is dry and hurts, and he's still nauseated, but by his estimation the worst is over.

Steve's breathing changes. Bucky looks over as his eyes flicker open. For a moment, neither of them move, Steve looking up at Bucky through his lashes and Bucky staring right back. Bucky's heart rate practically doubles. He can't remember the last time another human was this close to him for this long. It's Steve, his boss Steve with whom he's supposed to have a purely professional relationship, he frantically reminds himself, but he blushes anyway. Maybe he's still a little feverish.

"God," Steve whispers. He sounds unhappy.

"Steve?" Bucky prompts. He tenses, wondering if Steve will punish him for failing. For getting Steve shot.

Instead, Steve leans in closer to him, presses up against Bucky. Where they were touching lightly before -- the bed isn't nearly big enough for the two of them -- now Steve leans against Bucky deliberately, drawing him in close with the arm that's flung into his side. Steve buries his face in Bucky's neck and a shiver runs through him as Steve's hot breath washes over his sternum, under the hospital gown someone has dressed him in.

"I was so worried, Bucky, you have no idea." Bucky can't see his face from this angle, but he _can_ see Steve's back shuddering, and feel warm water on his chest.

"Steve?!" Bucky says again, alarmed. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do when someone starts crying. He wraps his arms around Steve to try to calm him down, and that's when Steve shakily lifts his head and leans in.

Instinctually, Bucky knows what's about to happen when Steve's lips part, his eyes dart down to Bucky's mouth, and his pupils dilate. Bucky wants this so badly that he doesn't even think. He doesn't dare lean in, but he parts his lips in invitation and blinks once, slowly, and that's all it takes to coax Steve forward to meet him.

The angle of the kiss pulls Steve over Bucky, pressing down on him and cocooning him in his heat and safety as their lips meet. It's gentle, careful. Steve is warm and soft, cupping the back of Bucky's head. His fingers curl into the back of Steve's shirt as Steve inhales and carefully deepens the kiss, tilting his head to the side and opening his mouth, running his smooth tongue over Bucky's lower lip. Bucky's almost far gone enough to open his own mouth when Steve freezes up and pulls back abruptly.

The hospital room crashes back all at once: the beeping machines, the _open_ door of his suite (not that anyone would be particularly shocked to find Steve screwing the helpmeet, but _still_ ) and Steve scrambling down off the bed so gracelessly it would be comical if Bucky weren't so disconcerted by his sudden retreat. "Bucky, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have --"

"Steve, it's --"

"I didn't even ask. I don't know what's wrong with me, the mission took a lot out of me but that's no excuse, and --"

"It's really not a big --"

"Crap, I'm gonna go get Nat, I'm sorry, I'll leave --"

"Steve!" Bucky protests, but Steve is already darting out the door, still wearing the leggings and undershirt he had on under his tac suit on their mission. Bucky's last glance of him is at his perfect ass, and isn't that just salt in the wound.

Bucky's mood plunges. He curls up into a ball and hugs his knees to his chest, stunned by the abrupt transition by being held by Steve, each reaffirming that they got through that shitshow safely, to being all alone in an unfamiliar hospital with an IV aching in his arm. He shouldn't have assumed that Steve wanted the same thing he did. Steve went over the sex part of the contract pretty much to ensure that Bucky checked off as few things as possible. _Let's face it_ , he thinks, _I'm a traumatized, mostly-useless ex-assassin, and it's not a surprise that Steve doesn't want me like I want him._ Sure, Steve had initiated the kiss. Steve is also probably out of his mind with exhaustion after all he went through while Bucky was half-conscious, followed by another several hours of wakefulness on the plane. Bucky shouldn't have taken advantage of him the way he did.

If he hadn't cocked everything up by allowing himself to be injured, compromising the mission, and causing Steve to be hurt, he's definitely done it by kissing Steve. Hydra had made it repeatedly very clear to him what would happen if he was caught dallying with any of his handlers, trainers, or guards. The moment he lost objectivity, he would have been useless to them. Romance is a liability, a maelstrom of dirty hormones that tarnishes everything it touches. Bucky is filthy with it, and --

Natasha raps on the doorframe, already in the room. Bucky looks over, caught off guard, and tries to school his expression. Natasha is the only person he can't always hear coming before he sees her.

"Steve told me to come check on you, but he wouldn't say why. Did something happen?"

"I got him hurt. I failed the mission. He's angry." He hadn't seemed angry, but that's just because he was confused and hadn't fully processed what Bucky had done yet, Bucky figures.

Nat scowls at him. "Stop thinking of SHIELD as Hydra. You didn't fail the mission just because it didn't go over exactly the way it was planned. You encountered an enemy strike team on a _non-combat_ operation, _and_ they outnumbered you fivefold and had poison specially engineered to take you down that we didn't know about. Getting away alive is succeeding the mission. Also, we got the intelligence we needed from Erdei. Her intelligence was sound; we don't think she was the mole. And Steve's not angry with you. It would take a lot more than this to piss him off, trust me."

Bucy grimaces. He doesn't argue because he knows it would be useless.

"How are you feeling?" she persists.

"Functional."

"Give me your pain, one to ten."

"Two."

"Ah, so _actually_ functional. Unless you're lying," she baits him.

Again, he doesn't respond.

"Well, clearly something else is going on that you're not telling me. But I have plenty of time, so I'm just going to wait until I hear it. In the meantime, let's get your doctor in here and get you discharged. I'm done with sitting around in waiting rooms, aren't you? You're fine to go home, by the looks of it."

Bucky perks up a little at that. In her usual hyper-effective fashion, Natasha pages a nurse, runs _him_ through all Bucky's vitals and stats instead of the other way around (which, Bucky supposes, kinda makes sense; even Stark's nurses haven't studied the supersoldier serum Bucky has), and makes the case for his discharge, adding that she'll happily "manually override" a denial. She makes it clear that by that she means "take Bucky, break a window, rappel down the side of the building, and call him a cab to drive him home before the nurses even notice they're gone".

About five minutes later, a stack of paperwork arrives. Natasha hands Bucky papers and points to the signature line; he signs without complaint and also without reading a word. Then she helps him out of bed and down the wall. He finds himself reassuringly steady. She leads him down to the first floor and out of the building.

Where Steve is waiting at a car.

Bucky almost shies away when he sees Steve, barely restraining his reaction. He's not sure where he thought he was going, but he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be sent home with Steve. Not after _that_. " <Am I going home with him?>" he hisses to Natasha in Russian.

"<Of course. Where did you think I was taking you?>" she says in a normal tone. "Why, is there some reason you'd rather be elsewhere?" She blinks up at him innocently. She _knows_! Bucky has to clamp down on his anger. Is she trying to get him fired?

"But I --"

"But what?"

"I just almost got him killed!"

"Wasn't your fault. He forgives you. You'll be fine. Call if you need anything."

"Wait, Natasha --""

She propels him towards Steve with a not-particularly-subtle shove to the lower back.

It's so much worse than Bucky could even have anticipated. Steve seems to be barely able to even look Bucky in the face. He's also blushing furiously. Bucky has made this whole situation so, so uncomfortable. They barely say a word to each other as they climb into the back of the car -- thank God for Tony and his platoon of discrete, security-cleared chauffeurs -- and pull away from the tower. Bucky scratches at his stitches, then stops himself because he's afraid the gesture might appear suggestive. Drawing on his training, he folds his hands in his lap and sits bolt upright and still, staring fixedly out the front window.

About halfway home, Steve heaves a huge sigh. "Buck, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. It won't happen again."

Bucky turns to look at him. Steve is pressed up against the far wall of the car, not looking up at Bucky. When five seconds pass and Bucky still doesn't know what Steve is talking about, he says, "What?"

Steve blushes dark red. "The, the kiss. I overstepped."

"It was my error," Bucky says stiffly. He's not sure what exactly Steve wants from this conversation, but he figures taking responsibility for it is a safe enough move.

"No, Buck, I kissed you, and I didn't ask first or anything, and that doesn't even matter because I shouldn't have done it in the first place. I shouldn't have even _thought_ about it, because you're my employee and we agreed that you wouldn't do that kind of thing!"

"I didn't agree to that," Bucky says. "I checked yes or maybe to most of those boxes on the contract. Including kissing."

"That doesn't mean I can just _do_ something like that to you without talking about it. I took advantage of you --"

"No, I... I wanted it," Bucky insists heatedly, the words escaping before he can stop himself because apparently making sure Steve doesn't feel like he's at fault is more important than whatever dignity Bucky has left. Had left. "If you regret it, just say so and I won't do it again. But I wanted you to do it. I wanted you to kiss me."

Steve turns and stares at Bucky. Now that Bucky is apparently un-repressing his feelings for his employer, he can't help but notice that Steve is attractively blushing. A huge sense of relief washes over him, like a dam finally breaking in a flood: There. He's said it, he admitted it. Now the confession is out of his hands, all the moments of lust and love he's meticulously hidden even from himself since he signed that damn contract with Steve, the most virtuous, beautiful, _kind_ man Bucky has ever met. Whatever happens now, at least he finally _said_ it.

He closes his eyes and leans back against the seat. Steve doesn't reciprocate, but that's fine. They've laid it all out on the table and now Bucky can go back to pretending he does not, in fact, have any feelings, and all of this will be behind them in a moment.

Steve's voice is soft when he breaks the tension between them. "Would... would you like me to do it again?"

Bucky opens his eyes again. _No way_. He looks over at Steve to see if he's joking, but he looks perfectly sincere, staring at Bucky with wide eyes and a furrowed brow.

"Yes," Bucky whispers, not quite believing this is really happening, and they both lean in.

They meet in the middle of the back seat of the car. Bucky grabs Steve's biceps, enjoying his sturdiness, and Steve angles his head and presses his mouth to Bucky's jaw. The sounds of the road fade into utter unimportance as light kisses trail up from his jaw to the corner of his mouth and their lips meet again.

Bucky's questions -- what does this mean? Is Steve in love with him or just in lust? Is this a new service he'll perform for his employer, or a personal relationship? Does Steve want him to continue as his helpmeet, or has that changed? Is Bucky even any good at kissing? -- all disappear as Steve kisses him. His whole focus is on the connection of their mouths. How long has it been since someone touched him tenderly like this? The warm affection of the kiss makes him shiver with pleasure.

"Wow," Steve whispers as he pulls away slightly. He looks at Bucky with something new in his eyes, emotions that Bucky can't read.

Bucky smiles and leans in again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY I MADE YOU WAIT ALMOST 85,000 WORDS FOR THIS!!!!!!!!! But hey, at least I didn't draw it out too much when we finally got here, right??
> 
> As a side note (this is a very very slight spoiler for the end of the fic) the power difference in Steve & Bucky's relationship, as I've hinted in Bucky's questions at the end of the fic, will be dealt with to some extent in the remaining chapters. I imagine it being fairly normal in this society for people in a helpmeet relationship to fall in love; agencies that employ helpmeets have ways of dealing with this that are fair to both parties.


	19. Home

Steve toes off his shoes in the doorway. Bucky follows him inside, but catches the doorway with his hip and stumbles. "Whoa," Steve says, reaching out to catch him, but Bucky recovers. "Are you dizzy?"

"No," Bucky sighs, sliding down the wall to take his shoes off. "Just really tired."

"Wanna go back to bed?"

"I'm okay."

"Yeah, that wasn't really a question. You're going back to sleep."

Steve waits for him to have his shoes off and walks with him back to his bedroom. "I think you might still have a fever. You look flushed," Steve says, frowning.

Bucky flops back on the mattress. "I don't think so. Just sleepy."

"Not surprising. You did almost die two days ago."

Bucky rolls his eyes behind his lids and mumbles, "Did not."

Steve feels his forehead. "I'm getting you Tylenol. Nat said you can take six."

He gets the medication and a glass of water and has to wake Bucky up to get him to take it. "Listen," he says when Bucky is done, "We have to talk about what happened in the car. Later, when you're awake."

Bucky murmurs something that could, by some stretch of the imagination, have been an agreement, and a minute later he's out cold.

* * *

Steve reads in Bucky's room until he eventually wakes up two hours later. Some of his color is back, and he claims to be feeling better and says he wants to wash off.

"I'll run you a bath. Do you want help?" Steve offers. 

Bucky blushes. "I don't need..."

"Yeah, but do you  _ want _ me to?" Steve presses.

"I..." Bucky pauses and closes his eyes. "I don't know what I want. It's hard for me to choose. It takes a lot of energy. I just want you to tell me what to do," he says bluntly.

Steve frowns. He knows Bucky has never been able to completely let go of the idea that Steve is in charge of him and has some kind of absolute divine right to order him around. Steve has never been terribly comfortable with it, and he's even less so now that they've admitted to being attracted to each other. 

On the other hand, it's just as obvious that having clear instructions makes Bucky happy and comfortable. Particularly when he's sick, Steve can understand him not wanting to navigate their complicated relationship on his own. If Bucky is specifically asking Steve to call the shots, Steve wants to accommodate that.

"How about I come with you, but if it starts to make you uncomfortable, I'll help you get dressed and then leave you alone?"

"That's good. Let's do that." Bucky stands gingerly, bracing one hand on the headboard, and walks to the ensuite. Steve turns the taps on to a comfortable level of heat and dumps in a healthy dose of Epsom salts. 

"Want me to help with your clothes?" he offers.

"No, I've got it," Bucky says, and strips, though without the full force of his usual efficiency. He slips his shirt off, exposing his dusky nipples and the dusting of thick, dark hair over his broad chest. He's also streaked with scars; like Steve's serum, Bucky's accelerates his healing and jacks up his ability to metabolize poison and fight infection to a ridiculous degree, but ultimately he's still human. Steve is happy to see that Bucky doesn't look self-conscious about any of it: the scars, the prosthetic arm, his body in general. Bucky lifts his hips to slide his pants off. Steve tries to tactfully avert his eyes. He really does. He's not particularly successful. 

"When's the last time someone took care of you like this?" Steve asks, trying to distract himself from Bucky's nudity.

Bucky's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "I don't know," he says finally. "My handlers took care of me, I guess."

"What do you mean?"

"They put me in and took me out of cryo, and they made sure I had what I needed not to die in the field. And they trained me. They made me strong. But it wasn't like this," he explains. "It didn't... feel good. You know what they were like."

"You know if you had asked I would have done this kind of thing for you before. It didn't have to wait until something horrible happened to you." 

"I didn't know that," Bucky admits. "But I wasn't ready anyway."

"Are you ready now? We can go as slow or as fast as you want. I'm in no hurry."

He shrugs and braces himself on Steve's shoulder casually as he takes off his underwear. "I have no idea," he admits. "But I really want to try."

"I do too," Steve says softly. Steve turns the water off and Bucky stands. "Hey, is this gonna be okay for the stitches?"

"Sure. Look at it," Bucky says. He gestures to his inner leg, and he's completely naked now, so it's impossible for Steve not to see his dick. He directs his gaze to the stitches with some effort. The wound is already sealed, looking like a months-old scar, yet with an unusual sheen suggesting that it's not really quite that old. Steve probably has one like it on his back. There are circles of scar tissue that have formed around the stitches, holding them in place. The black sutures stand out starkly against the pale scar, but they don't look particularly painful, just strange the way they're embedded in his skin.

As Steve looks at it, he trails his hand over Bucky's hip, and Bucky leans in and kisses him again. He's a surprisingly good kisser, considering how long it must have been for him; he softly captures Steve's lips, careful but not overly so, and trails a hand softly up Steve's jaw, curling it around the back of his neck to pull him closer.

They just kiss for a minute, their legs entangling and slotting together, Bucky leaned back against the edge of the tub. Steve can feel Bucky's arousal, and he runs his hand over it, just once, then reaches both hands around to cup his lower back. 

"I like that," Bucky breathes when they finally pull away from each other.

"Yeah?" Steve says, grinning. 

"Yeah, a lot."

"Alright, come here." Steve shuts the water off before the bath can overflow and helps Bucky in. Bucky lets out a loud sigh of relief as he sinks into the water. He tips his head back against the side of the tub, closing his eyes. A few minutes of comfortable silence follow. "Feels nice," Bucky murmurs.

"Want me to wash you?" Steve offers tentatively. He's inching carefully into Bucky's private territory, his inner world that had been completely closed to him until recently. Until this mission. Bucky is so strong, powerful and capable, yet utterly delicate in other ways. Steve is hyperconscious of the fact that few people have been kind to him in any way. He doesn't want to push him too hard.

Bucky looks up at Steve uncertainly. "Do you want to?"

"Of course. I wouldn't offer if I didn't want to."

"Then sure."

Steve runs a soft washcloth under Bucky's arms and over his back, rinsing away the rubbing-alcohol-and-latex smell of the hospital. He asks him to close his eyes and carefully washes and rinses his face. "My handlers used to do this for me," he says.

"Wash you?"

"Well, they would hose me down."

"Bucky, that's..."

"Yeah, I know now." He rolls his eyes. "At the time, the cryofreeze, and with them constantly erasing my memories, it made it very easy for them to treat me however they wanted. I had no reference points. As far as I knew, until I met you, everyone got stripped and hosed down with freezing water at the end of a day at work. I had no idea my relationship with  my handlers wasn't normal. I thought everyone's boss would just do whatever they wanted to them. Some of these scars are from them -- from my handlers, not missions. Punishment." He gestures to his back, which is crosshatched with a variety of scars: some narrow and straight, some long, curving, wiggling, uneven, circular burn-marks...

"They hurt you," Steve states. "Regularly. Beyond just the arm." He knows it's true, but he wants to share the reality between them.

"Yeah. I know. I didn't realize it before. When I was first here, I didn't understand why you were so weird about... about Hydra. I assumed Hydra and SHIELD were two sides of the same coin. Maybe SHIELD did it differently, giving me a cushy hotel room and making me sign all that consent stuff, but they were eventually going to use me as a weapon. I thought it was only the facade that was different. But it's not.  _ Everything _ is different. You... you're different. Very different."

He stops for a minute to breathe, trembling a little bit. "Jesus. Sorry. This is so confusing." He wipes his face off. "Three months ago I could think about... that stuff and feel nothing. Now it's like... the wires in my brain that let me feel are reconnecting one by one. The more they link up, the more I realize that... I thought I was okay with what happened to me, but I was really just in denial." He sighs, and it sounds tight, like he's choked up. "I don't know how to do this. How to have a normal relationship. I was so scared you would find out how I feel about you, because it's... the relationship we have isn't anything like what I know. I mean, you're technically my boss -- well, SHIELD is, but you give the directions -- but it's not anything like how it was with Hydra. I don't know how to understand it, or how to reciprocate in a way  _ you'll  _ understand. With Hydra, how I felt and what I expressed was never important, as long as I was compliant. They couldn't have cared less if I loved them or hated their guts. Who I was didn't matter. But with you, it seems like the most important thing. Who I am, who you are, and who we are to one another."

Steve nods. 

"But I don't even know who I am," Bucky finishes. "I don't even know who I  _ want _ to be. It's like Hydra made me a blank slate, and I've only been writing for a few months. You've had years."

"Maybe you don't know who you are, but I do," Steve says after thinking about it for a minute. "You're hardworking. Creative. I know you don't cook out of a cookbook, and the stuff you come up with is phenomenal. It comes out in your work for SHIELD, too. When we've chosen our sniper spots, you'll move one of them to a building we hadn't even considered. Like on that one assignment in Connecticut, when you put one of the snipers in a sewer. None of us would ever have thought to have her shooting from  _ underground _ , but it worked... it probably saved that mission when the fifth Hydra team showed up and she was able to take them out. You're also resourceful, and quick on your feet. Flexible and quick-thinking. If you choose to stay on with SHIELD, you'll be a fantastic agent for them. And if you become, hell, a chef, a professional skateboarder, a sommelier..." Bucky laughs and swats at Steve, but he continues on, grinning. "Whatever you do, you're going to be fantastic at it."

He places both hands on Bucky's shoulders. "Listen, you might not know exactly who you are yet, and I don't have all the answers either. That's okay. Hydra will probably always have an effect on your life. What they did to you isn't just going to go away. You will probably be rebuilding from that for a long time. You had to be strong, so strong, to survive it and come out as someone who's able and ready to tackle building a new life. It amazes me. Whoever you turn out to be -- whatever you decide you want -- I want to see it. I want to be there with you. As a friend, or... something else. I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I know we might part ways someday. But right now, I want to be here for you. I want to see the amazing things you do. Is that okay?"

Bucky nods. "I don't know who the hell this capable person you're describing is. But yes. I want you to be there. I want... I want to be together. With you."

They're silent for a minute, and then Steve abruptly says, "We probably shouldn't be having the relationship talk right now."

"I'm fine," Bucky says reflexively. 

"Tilt your head back so I can wash your hair," Steve says. He knows better by now than to have the 'I'm fine' argument with Bucky.

Bucky obediently places his head in Steve's outstretched. Steve wets his hair, then massages shampoo into his scalp and through to the ends of his hair, taking more time than strictly necessary. He can feel tiny bumps of scar tissue on Bucky's scalp, but Bucky doesn't give any indication that they're painful, so he lets it go. Bucky flops bonelessly into Steve's hands as he rubs his scalp and even lets out a tiny moan.

"That feel good?" Steve asks, pausing.

"So good," Bucky says.

He finishes, rinses his hair, and helps him out of the bath. "Do you want to eat something or go to sleep?"

"Sleep, if that's okay."

"It's definitely okay." Steve grabs him some pajamas from his room and helps him dress, then brings him to bed. He frowns when he sees how flushed Bucky is. "The bath might not have been a great idea. I think your fever is up again." 

Bucky's already half asleep. He reaches up and circles Steve's wrist with his metal hand. "Stay here," he demands fuzzily.

"On the floor?"

"You can be in the bed," Bucky announces.

Steve scrutinizes Bucky, whose eyes are closed. Half-asleep, all the lines of confusion and wariness on his face, so familiar to Steve, are smoothed out. He looks young, peaceful. One of his eyes opens and he looks up at Steve beatifically.

"I don't..." Steve starts.

"Trust me," Bucky says simply.

He flips back Bucky's comforter and crawls over him to lie on the bed behind him. He's not sure if Bucky wants to actually touch or not. He flips the light off and then waits, trying to relax. Then he feels Bucky scoot back against him, inserting himself into the curve of Steve's body as the little spoon. He slides a hand over Bucky's waist like he did when they slept in the same bed in the hospital. It's easy to fall asleep beside him.


	20. It Might Actually Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, we're basically wrapped up here! The last two chapters are very short (only about 2k more words total!!!) and I am aiming to get them both up tomorrow!!!

At around three in the morning, Bucky comes awake with his hand around someone's throat, which is never a good start. He was just in a Hydra lab a second ago, or thought he was, and it only takes him a moment to realize it was likely a dream, but that doesn't help much with figuring out what's going on in the real world.

This is not the first time he has woken up trying to kill someone. He's been on missions where people tried to kill him in his sleep. Hydra trained him to respond to threats while unconscious, half-conscious, on various drugs, and now whenever he's less than completely awake his first instinct is to kill whoever touches him.

It's a great instinct to have when you only ever truly sleep in combat situations (Bucky rarely slept when he wasn't on a mission; his handler would simply stick him back into cryo). It's not a great instinct to have when your boyfriend is sleeping in your bed.

The last thing he remembers is being in Steve's house, which means this  _ probably _ isn't a combat situation. He can't see the face of the person below him; it's too dark. He's too afraid to let up on their windpipe before he's absolutely sure it's _actually_  Steve, but equally terrified that he's currently choking Steve out.

He swaps his metal arm for his flesh one, letting up the pressure, but keeping enough of a grip to hold whoever it is in place and barks, "Who are you?" He repeats it before the person under him manages, "Bucky... You're okay. You can let go. Come on..."

It's Steve's voice. Bucky whimpers and jerks back, letting the pressure up immediately. His head is pounding, and when he moves too fast the room spins. " _ Steve _ ," he breathes. "I... I..."

"We're in your room," Steve tells him, which is nice because he wasn't 100% sure. "It's the middle of the night. I think you were having a nightmare. I tried to wake you up. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have touched you."

Bucky shakes his head violently, rejecting Steve's apology. It makes the headache worse. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, I'm alright." 

"Are you sure? I could have --"

"Sh," Steve cuts him off. "I know, but you didn't. I'm really fine. See?" He takes Bucky's hand and brings it back up to his neck, gently pulling Bucky forward when he resists. Bucky can feel Steve's pulse in his jugular, fast but regular. It helps. "I'm not hurt. I know you didn't mean to. You just spooked me a little, that's all. It seemed like you were somewhere else."

"I was dreaming," he says shortly. "You should go back to your room." He gets to his feet with some difficulty, pulling his hand away from Steve's. 

"It's fine. I mean, I'll leave if you want, but you should come back to bed. You need to sleep."

"Can't." He can never sleep after dreaming.

"Alright, I get it. Are you feeling okay? Does anything hurt?"

"My head." It comes out as a bit of a whine, and he winces.

"Okay, let's take care of that first. Sit back down and I'll get the meds."

Bucky shakes his head. Steve needs to leave; he shouldn't be around Bucky when he's like this. But Steve herds Bucky back to the edge of the bed, leaves the room, and comes back a minute later with some kind of pills. Bucky dry swallows them in sequence, then remembers to take a drink of the water Steve has also brought as an afterthought. "You'll feel better in a few minutes when that kicks in," Steve reassures him.

Bucky shakes his head. "I don't know what's wrong with me. The poison should be out of my system by now..."

"Jesus, Bucky, it's only been like two days. Cut yourself some slack. Even if the drug's out, it probably threw your whole system out of whack. We're not on a schedule here. You don't have to instantly be okay after someone tries to assassinate you."

"Yes I do. I'm not useful if I'm not okay."

"You're under no obligation to be useful."

"Then why keep me around? I don't want to be your charity case," he snaps.

"You're not!" Steve snaps back. Bucky flinches, even though he just used the exact same tone with Steve, and Steve apologizes. He kneels down in front of the bed, putting himself lower than Bucky, which makes Bucky kind of uncomfortable. "Of course not. I don't think about you that way. You're here because I... I just need someone around sometimes." He sighs. "I know this isn't really the best time, but I think I should tell you why SHIELD started assigning me helpmeets."

"Oh?" The last time Bucky asked about this, it was in the tent in the snow, before all the Hydra stuff went down, and Steve had deflected, saying he didn't want to talk about it. Apparently he had rethought. 

"After SHIELD thawed me out of the ice and introduced me to the 21st century, they recruited me pretty much immediately. And they had to explain to me the current... political state of the world. All the shit I missed while I was frozen for however many years. Like... Israel and Palestine. The American occupations and American-sponsored dictatorships in the Middle East. Human rights violations, just everywhere. Famines in drought-stricken countries, exacerbated by climate change caused by the greed of huge corporations. Immensely poor countries whose wealth was stolen by colonizers. Racial tensions in the US. I was working for SHIELD trying to fix these huge problems, or at least get them under control, but I'm just one guy. Even with the rest of SHIELD added in, our progress was tiny. It felt like we weren't getting anywhere. I specialized in Hydra cells at the time, and their whole motto is that when you take down one head, two more grow. It really got to me. It seemed like it was true. We'd go on a raid, and the next week we'd catch news of a Hydra resurgence in insert-country-here. Six new cells would pop up on the map, and we'd be sent right back out again. Their specialty is hopelessness, and it was working. It was working really well.

"So at the end of the day I'd go home to my apartment -- a different place than I have now; Tony insisted I move -- and I'd pass homeless people, drug addicts who were being arrested by the police, who were too poor to get help. There was a couple upstairs from me who were always fighting -- one of the partners was abusing the other, and I kept calling the police but they said they couldn't do anything about it. 

"I got... really depressed. Okay, long story short, I tried to... I tried to kill myself."

Bucky makes a wordless sound of pain. He's gripping Steve's hand too hard, probably half crushing it, but he doesn't care. He grabs his other hand too. He knows what Steve is describing is in the past, but it scares the shit out of him.

"I know. I know. I'm sorry," Steve continues. "But I was just so depressed, I lost sight of the good I wanted to do in the world.  And the good that was  _ already _ in the world. I didn't think I was even helping anything, so why stick around? On top of that, I felt completely alone. I wasn't actually working with the Avengers yet; some of them would come on my missions, but I wasn't close to them. It felt like there was nobody in the universe who could possibly understand what I was going through. I know it sounds ridiculous now, but back then it just felt like the truth. I didn't know anyone else who was augmented, at least not as a friend. I didn't know any veterans. I tried going to a support group at the VA -- that's how I met Sam, actually -- but I felt like I had nothing in common with the soldiers who went there, either. They were fighting modern wars and I had fought in World War Two.

"Anyway, Fury found out I tried to kill myself and made me get treatment. I went through an inpatient program and got back on track, for a while. That was when SHIELD first assigned me a helpmeet. A security-cleared civilian, a nice man by the name of Henry. He had worked for the government in a cleared job, and then somehow he had gotten into sex work, and SHIELD decided to offer him something a little more above-the-table. Henry... really did his best. But living with him just made me feel even more broken. It pissed me off that SHIELD had to waste resources paying someone to make sure I didn't actually manage to kill myself. Also, Henry had never seen war. He had never seen anybody die. He had an optimistic worldview, but it was completely naive. I'd try to tell him about some of the stuff I'd seen and he'd just come up with platitudes, like, there's still good in the world, think of what you have to live for, that type of thing. I was like, what does he know? It made me feel like... there were a billion civilians out there like Henry with no idea how far we have left to go in the world. And there are people suffering, every day, and nobody cares...

"I also resented that SHIELD felt like they had to put someone in my house to make sure I didn't die. It was invasive. I was predisposed to dislike him. I did my best to be civil, and he was helpful around the house on days I was too tired to get out of bed, or whatever, but I still resented the fact that SHIELD thought I needed him around at all.

"So, um, that didn't work out. The depression got worse again. This time I contacted SHIELD and got help before things really came to a head,. I said I couldn't live with Henry anymore and I needed him moved. I got a PTSD diagnosis around that time, and they ended up sending Natasha to live with me. I don't know how much you know about her background...?"

"The basics." She was famous among Hydra, and he had picked up myths about her from various loose-lipped guards.

Steve nods. "Well, this was pretty recently after SHIELD got her from Russia. They figured we had a lot in common, they needed a way to see if Nat was trustworthy enough to bring on mission, why not throw her in with me for a few months and see if that worked.

"Having her around made a huge difference. She literally saved my life. Because she's seen it. She  _ knows _ the way the world is, for people like you and me. She sees under the surface. I remember talking to her one night and trying to explain how I felt like I couldn't go on with life knowing how much horrible shit was going on right under my nose, constantly, and she said, 'You watch someone be waterboarded to death in the morning and then in the evening you go to a business dinner where you have to try to enjoy the shit out of a five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine to make your boss happy. I know how you feel.' I realized she actually did know. It  _ wasn't _ just me." He laughs, and it's a little bitter. "I know now how arrogant that sounds, but I hadn't met anyone else who shared that view, at the time. It's not like I could hang out and trade stories with my old army buddies from before.

"She helped me crawl out of the hole. She made me get out of bed every single morning even when it took her an hour to talk me into it. She made  _ me _ do all the chores around the house, to teach me there were still things I could control. That's what  _ you _ do for me, Bucky. Not in the same way -- you're not her, and I don't want you to be. But I hear you getting up in the morning, showering, going to make breakfast, and I think,  _ I can do it, because Bucky's doing it.  _ Just seeing you get up and  _ fight _ every morning, when I know you must be tired and hurting, makes me think I can do it too. And then I get out of bed and I... keep fighting. Of course what I went through is nothing compared to what you went through --"

"Never say that," Bucky interrupts. Steve is surprised to hear that he's crying. He hadn't realized. "Sam taught me that you can't compare like that. Pain is pain."

Steve reaches up and tucks a lock of hair absently behind Bucky's ear. Then he leans up and kisses him on the cheek. He can taste salt, tears, and he thumbs away the tear track as he pulls away.

"Steve, you have to tell me, okay? If you ever feel like that again. I need you to tell me. So I can help."

Steve nods, still hovering in front of Bucky. "It's not so bad anymore. But I will."

"Thank you."

"Still feel like you can't go back to sleep?"

"I don't think I can, but come here. We can at least cuddle."

 

* * *

Steve doesn't let Bucky do  _ anything _ the next day, which is excruciating. He watches like eight episodes of some political show on Netflix with Steve, reads, and checks the perimeter of the house, but Steve won't let him clean or do any actual chores, and he won't even pass off paperwork for him to do. (He says he doesn't have any, which is probably a lie. There's always paperwork.) By the evening he's pretty much going stir crazy. He takes a walk in the park by the house, which helps a little bit.

At the end of the day when Steve is heading to bed, he stops at the couch where Bucky is scrolling through information on modern gun manufacturers on his tablet, catching up on the latest sniper rifles. "So, are you coming with me?"

"Coming where?"

"To bed. I mean, to my bed, with me. To sleep."

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "You do recall that I almost strangled you to death last night."

Steve scoffs. "I would say that's a bit of an exaggeration. I didn't even pass out. Anyway, it's water under the bridge." The bruise around his neck, which was pretty colorful earlier in the morning, is all but faded.

"I worry about your survival instincts."

Steve laughs. "Well, maybe I need you to come watch out for me. Make sure I don't do anything stupid."

Bucky raises both eyebrows. "You  _ are _ pretty helpless on your own." He follows Steve, who's cracking up laughing too much to even retort, back to his bedroom.

Bucky still doesn't know what their relationship means, or how to navigate it. They've agreed that they're boyfriends, which helps a little, but there's still so much he's not used to, so much he doesn't understand. In fact, he's barely gotten used to his and Steve's relationship as co-habitants; living with another human is weird after having spent most of the past seventy years, when he wasn't unconscious, either in the presence of handlers who treated him like a tool, or alone on missions. Being in some kind of romantic relationship is a whole new level of complication and "regular human friends" was already pretty complicated. He's also afraid that if Steve really gets to know him he'll realize how shallow Bucky is. He usually only feels one of two emotions: fear, or loneliness. When he's happy he can tell because he's  _ not _ feeling one of those things. He has some idea that people in relationships are supposed to feel other emotions than those two, and he's afraid that he's too traumatized to learn those ones. He's a killer; how could he be so presumptuous as to believe that he has any future other than as some kind of glorified bodyguard?

This whole gambit with the kissing was a terrible idea. Whatever happened to cooperating his way through his one-year trial contract and becoming a SHIELD sniper, going back to some variant on his old life except with more stability, less abuse, and a paycheck? The entire point of this debacle was to earn back his field clearance and get re-deployed, and now he's sleeping in his employer's bed and discovering a warm feeling in his chest he's never felt before. It all feels so  _ good _ , and it's so  _ wrong _ because loving Steve is a useless and vulnerable thing to do.

Yet he also believes that he owes Steve his loyalty -- no, he _wants_ to be loyal to him. They saved each others' lives in the Canadian taiga, Bucky by taking a knife for Steve -- when's the last time he actually took pain  _ for  _ someone else? He's not sure it has ever happened before Steve -- and Steve by getting them both out alive. A year ago that would have meant nothing to Bucky; he would have been able to walk out of the apartment without a glance back and kept walking until he found something challenging to kill. This Bucky, the one who cries sometimes, who admits to his weaknesses and fears, who's allowed to  _ feel _ ... can't. Steve has seen the worst of him, and still he's here, sleeping like a log beside Bucky. He has seen him kill, and yet he's not afraid. Is Steve stupid? Is he romanticizing Bucky, building him up to be someone he's not? Are the virtues Steve claims to see in him something Steve has fabricated, or are they real? Is it possible Steve could be starting to understand Bucky, to actually get to know him, and he still  _ likes _ him?

He rolls over and runs a hand across his face. Steve's breathing is peaceful beside him. Steve has gone through so much that Bucky had no idea about. He has been fixated on his own problems for these past few months, so overwhelmed by dealing with his own issues that he had no time for anyone else's. He wants to change that. He wants to let Steve in.

Interpersonal commitments complicate everything. When he considers going back to being an assassin, he also considers that that would entail leaving Steve behind. If he were to die, Steve, he thinks, would likely feel sad, and Bucky doesn't want that to happen. Steve isn't just his golden ticket back into a job as a sniper anymore. He's a person, a friend. A partner.

Despite the inconvenience of it, Bucky can't bring himself to resent the change.

* * *

They have a few weeks of relative peace after Bucky recovers from the stabbing to settle into the new aspects of their relationship.

When Steve comes home from work the first day he returns to SHIELD, Bucky greets him with a tight hug, and the two of them drift towards the couch where they normally sit and read or watch a show side-by-side after work. Bucky curls into Steve's side, and after five or ten minutes of enjoying his warmth and the gentle movement of his breath, he gets up the courage to set his book aside on the end table and turn to face Steve.

Steve looks him up and down, then leans forward, and their mouths meet. It still feels just like the first time, every time. Bucky keeps thinking he'll get used to it, but he doesn't. Steve's soft mouth is pure sensory overload. And Steve clearly knows what he's doing with a partner, teasing Bucky with flicks of his tongue and idly running his hands up and down Bucky's back as they kiss. Bucky starts panting when Steve moves to press kisses into his neck, then does something absolutely illegal with his mouth and Bucky's ear until Bucky's embarrassingly hard, pressing himself into Steve. 

They shift so Bucky's straddling Steve, lying half on top of him on the couch, and Bucky breathes an internal sigh of relief that Steve knew better than to put him underneath him. Bucky braces his metal arm on the back of the couch, but Steve reaches out for it and gently replaces it on his shoulder. He turns his head to the side and kisses the inside of Bucky's wrist. He feels it as a touch, but because he can see what Steve is doing it sends a jolt through him, down his spine. Steve smiles up at him; he knows exactly what he does to Bucky.

Their legs slot together, and the light pressure on Bucky's dick makes him exhale shakily. He threads his fingers through Steve's hair, continuing to kiss him and wondering if Steve wants anything more. 

But Steve doesn't push. He scratches light circles over Bucky's back, squeezes him in close. After almost an hour they both wind down, breathless and flushed, and Steve pulls Bucky to his chest. He rests bonelessly on top of him, listening to Steve's loud heartbeat through his breastbone, wondering when the last time he was this relaxed was and drawing a blank.

Their relationship is comfortable, and the house they live in feels more like a home than it ever has.

They sleep in the same bed one or two nights a week, when nightmares or Bucky's nerves about sleeping around other people don't prevent it. Steve doesn't have to work as hard as usual to remind himself of the good in the world, even after the trauma of seeing Bucky almost die on their last mission, although that does make him clingy for a week or so afterwards. Bucky, for his part, finds himself better able to face his memories of Hydra, running over them in his mind to try to understand them. He's surprised to find that SHIELD doesn't fire him after that disaster of a mission; they start calling him into the office three or four times a week to strategize on upcoming Hydra raids. 

He's not sure why they still want him working for them, but when he says as much to Natasha, she scoffs. "Are you serious? Our top operatives don't have  _ half _ as much information on Hydra as you have at your fingertips. I mean, they can list the names of fifty bases, sure, but _ you _ can get into Hydra's heads and guess how they'll think. You're also the world's foremost expert on sniping, need I remind you, and that's useful even when you're not in the field. You're worth as much as any five of SHIELD's VIPs, and all your bosses know it. If you ask me, you should be asking them for a raise." She smiles coyly. "Luckily for you, you don't have to worry about that. I have your career advancement covered."

"What does  _ that _ mean?"

"Let's just say I put in a friendly word with your superiors that your allowance should reflect the life-threatening danger you faced in the field on your last mission, and your  _ heroic _ sacrifice for the  _ invaluable _ Steve Rogers vis-a-vis taking a knife to save him."

A week later he gets his bimonthly check from SHIELD in the mail and the amount is double what he normally gets. He smiles to himself, already wondering if there's something he can get Steve as a gift now that he has some disposable income to spend or put away. 

Also in the envelope is a little scrap of paper with a winky face and a heart drawn on in red pen, with a little red lipstick kiss-print on it. Bucky's not sure how Natasha could have managed to slip it into his sealed paycheck envelope, but if anyone could do it, it would be her. 

Eventually Steve is called away for an overnight. It's a diplomatic operation, and Bucky isn't invited. Steve tells him it's because SHIELD doesn't want him back in the field so shortly after being injured.

"But I'm fine now," Bucky complains. 

Steve shrugs. "Don't shoot the messenger. That's just what they told me, Buck." The two are in the kitchen. Steve is perched on the kitchen counter, and Bucky stands between his legs, one hand on each of Steve's muscular thighs, trying not to be distracted by them.

"It's because they think I'm a weapon. They don't think I can be diplomatic. They only want me on missions where I might have to kill, because I'm --"

"Bucky, slow down. You're totally jumping to conclusions. They didn't say anything like that. They're sending me because I already know these people. They're my Swiss contacts."

"I'm ready to go out again. I want to be there to protect you. I won't even take a gun if they don't want me to."

"Is that what this is about?" Steve cups his hand around Bucky's face. "This isn't a combat mission. I'm going to be perfectly safe. And I can take care of myself, anyway."

"I know, I just..." He leans forward to rest his forehead against Steve's shoulder.

"I'll miss you too," Steve jokes, drawing Bucky in close and circling his thumbs across the back of his neck. Bucky melts into him. "This isn't the hill to die on, Buck. They'll put you back in the field soon enough if that's where you want to be. I'm going to be gone three days, maximum, and then I'll come right back home. You can hang out with Natasha."

"I can take care of myself," Bucky echoes him.

"I know you can." Bucky looks like he's going to protest further, but Steve pushes himself off the counter and leads Bucky back to Steve's bedroom, where he pulls him down on top of him, and from then on he's not so annoyed about it after all.

* * *

Three days later, he has completely changed his mind.

"He's late," he says to Natasha as soon as she enters the foyer. She's come over every day of Steve's absence and given him things to do, like shopping for groceries or taking him to her house where she made him reorganize her closet, a task he thoroughly enjoyed. "He hasn't texted me or called, and nobody's telling me anything."

"Slow down, cowboy," she says, gratingly casual, as she kicks off her shoes and beelines for her habitual spot at the kitchen counter. She pulls down a pair of water glasses. "He was supposed to be here at 1800. It's currently 1907. Not exactly time to panic yet."

"Are you  _ kidding _ me?" Bucky hisses, stalking over to her with his arms crossed tensely over his chest. "He's off with some high-stakes diplomat --"

"The presidents of Switzerland and Wakanda," she interjects.

"-- some stupid high-stakes diplomat talking politics in the middle of the  _ public _ where  _ everyone _ can see him, completely vulnerable, and you're telling me to just  _ calm down _ when I  _ haven't heard from him in six hours? _ "

Natasha gently sets down the glasses, having filled one of them with water, and plants her hands on Bucky's shoulders, pressing down hard. "Time to take it down a notch, James. I know you're upset, but there's no need to yell." He can feel tremors of tension rippling through him, hear his shallow breaths jerking in and out. Annoyingly, she's right. He's working himself up towards a panic attack, and it's not like she's even the target of his frustration. He forces himself to take in a deep breath, hold it, then sigh it out, like Sam taught him.

"Don't tell me to calm down," he grouses, his voice significantly more steady than it had been a minute ago.

"I'll stop when it stops working. I assume you've texted him?"

"Nine times. Nothing."

"In all likelihood, his plane is just delayed," Natasha points out. Steve insisted on taking a commercial flight, citing the exorbitant carbon footprint of Stark's private jets. 

"I know. I know!" Bucky braces his hands on the counter and drops his head so his long hair falls in his face. "I just... I can't stop thinking about everything else that could have happened."

"Let's give it another hour. Then we'll call Fury or Tony and see if either of them know what's going on. Sound like a deal?"

Bucky shakes his head, but he says, "I guess so," and shakily takes the water from her hand. "Thanks." He takes a swallow and tries to relax.

A half-hour later, she has finally talked him over to the couch and gotten him to lie down with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching some cartoon about spaceships she wanted him to try, when the doorbell rings. He snaps upright and darts to the door, Natasha trailing along behind him. He flings the door open, and Steve is standing there, looking exhausted and with his hair sticking up everywhere.

"Bucky! I'm so sorry I couldn't text you. My phone died, and I --"

That's as far as he gets before Bucky flings his arms around him, pulling him close as the warm spring air swirls around them both. A wave of relief floods him, followed by a rush of heat, excitement to be holding Steve again. He smiles up at him. "I missed you."

Behind him, Natasha, rolling her eyes, slips around them and heads for the door. "Well, that's my cue. See you at work Monday, guys." 

"Nat! Feel free to stay if you want; our door is always open --" Steve starts, but Natasha cuts him off.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not sure I want to see whatever's gonna happen next. Bye, see ya!" She closes the door behind her, but not before throwing Bucky a saucy wink. He flushes bright red and pulls back from Steve an inch.

"I'm so happy to see you," Steve laughs, and then they're kissing, leaning back against the closed front door. Bucky runs his hand up to cup the back of Steve's head, and Steve rests his hands on Bucky's hips. Bucky's gentle until he feels Steve respond and accept his invitation. Then he eagerly presses up against him. He's quickly getting hard, and he wonders if Steve can feel it too when he feels Steve's own hardness prodding him in the hip. He inhales and quietly moans.

Steve pulls away, his eyes bright. "Wanna take this to the bedroom?"

"Steve,  _ yes _ ." 

They move to the bed, and Bucky lightly pushes Steve back down into the covers. Steve pulls Bucky after him, then flips him over onto his back.

Cold fear flashes through him as Steve leans in to kiss him.

This was how it always happened with Hydra. With his shitty second handler. He knows it's not that, but his sympathetic nervous system is revving up anyway. Steve is back on his lips with his eyes closed and can't see what's happening, the thoughts flying through Bucky's mind. 

He's starting to check out of the situation, lean back and accept his situation passively, and he quickly stops himself. He has to  _ do _ something, to make a decision. If he lets Steve do this to him, he'll never trust Steve again, and Steve won't trust him in here.

He makes his choice and pushes Steve back gently. "Hang on a sec," he says, his voice shaking.

Steve pulls back further. "Yeah, what's up?"

"I..." He doesn't want to stop; he's completely hard and besides, he trusts Steve to make it good for him. He just... "I want to be on top."

"Oh, sure. Steve moves to one side and reverses their positions again.

It's that easy.

And that's when Bucky realizes this whole love thing might actually work. 

* * *

Steve's as good in bed as he is everywhere else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so excited to get to give some of Steve's Mysterious Backstory in this chapter! This is definitely a Bucky-centric fic but I think it's cool to get a glimpse into Steve's head too -- hope you guys agree :)


	21. Fraternization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything works out just fine.

To Bucky's great relief, SHIELD starts putting him on the roster for missions agan. They pair him with members of Steve's team and send him out for sensitive work with Hydra. Even for the missions he doesn't participate in, he gets a say in positioning of the snipers and tactics.

He gets closer with Steve's team. Close enough to know the name of Clint's dog and to pick up some sign language from him. To meet Thor, who commutes between two different SHIELD locations, this one and another outpost in Scandinavia, and therefore is at briefings and debriefings relatively rarely. To see Mr. Banner completely lose his cool in a meeting and to accept his apology the next time the team convenes.

He gets to know the team well, and he treasures his role on it, which makes facing the task he and Steve have decided is necessary for him much harder than it otherwise would be. 

* * *

"What is this?" Natasha asks, taking the sheaf of forms from Bucky.

"You know what it is," he says, rolling his eyes with forced casualness. "You probably watched me sign them all in real time on my tablet and then stared at the printer queue while I ran them off."

That gets a half-smile out of her. "Humor me."

"My resignation," Bucky says, stepping back and clasping his hands behind his back.

She sets the papers aside without even looking at them. Yeah, she  _ definitely _ watched him sign them. "And why, exactly, would I be looking at your resignation?"

Bucky looks her in the eye, standing his ground. He and Steve had a long conversation about this last night, and although he agonized about the decision, he's confident about the choice he has made.

He and Steve needed to address the power imbalance in their relationship at some point. Bucky initially saw nothing particularly wrong with getting involved with Steve, given that Bucky's his helpmeet. But after Steve drew some parallels with Bucky's treatment with Hydra, he started to see his point. The problem is that Steve being, technically, in some sense, Bucky's manager means their relationship is not only personal, but professional as well. It means their private life can't just be private, because it affects Bucky's job performance. Also, SHIELD would probably come down on Steve's side in the event of a dispute, because of his seniority. It's not exactly a good foundation for a healthy romance when that threat is on Steve's side.

Bucky ended up agreeing with Steve that the last thing he needs is to have an intimate and, let's be real, somewhat dependent emotional relationship with his boss, given that that was how his relationship with his handlers functioned while Hydra owned him. Once it became clear that he and Steve were not about to return to being "just friends", there was really only one way to resolve the situation.

"It's a conflict of interest," he explains. "I talked to Sam about it. I can't be working for someone I'm also in love with. It's not healthy."

"Oh, you're in  _ love _ with him now?" Natasha teases.

Bucky just rolls his eyes again. "It's not appropriate. If it were just casual sex, that would be one thing..."

"Oh-kay, I think that's more than enough details about your sex life for now."

"I didn't even say anything! Anyway, I've... I've really enjoyed working with SHIELD. And with you, Natasha. I hope we can still hang out as friends..."

"Wait, wait, wait. Do you seriously think SHIELD is going to let you go that easy?"

Off-balance, Bucky says, "Uh, yes?"

"I don't know why I have to keep explaining this to you, but you're one of the best strategists SHIELD has ever seen. Your work planning missions with Rogers has saved lives. Including Steve's life. Steve and I have a past," she says, "and I want him to stick around for a good while longer. Even though he's already technically ninety. There's no way I'm letting you leave without a fight, especially because I know you don't really want to."

"I appreciate the kind words," he says stiffly, "But I really can't stay on as Steve's helpmate. And you said I can't get into another position in SHIELD until my year with Steve has elapsed. Don't make this harder for me than it has to be," he finishes, not quite as stoically as he would have liked.

"You don't have to be his helpmate for the rest of the year. That's what I'm saying." She brusquely feeds his resignation forms into a scanner as she continues to talk to him. "I'll file this today, and in an hour you'll be officially released from your contract as Steve's helpmeet. By the evening you'll have a new job offer on your tablet as an agent of SHIELD, as one of Steve's peers. No promises, but I'll try to get you onto his team as a coworker. You two work well together. Nobody's going to give a crap about the one year contract, given the work you've done for SHIELD already. We'll put in a character reference from Sam, and I'll give another. Tony doesn't care about the letter of the law. We can prove you're competent and a team player. That's all that matters. He'll want to keep you on as badly as we do."

Bucky feels a fizz of elation and quickly tries to kill it. He doesn't want to be disappointed. "But what about fraternization policy?"

"There isn't one. It's your personal business. If you and Steve have a horrible, messy, dramatic breakup -- which, by the way, please don't -- we'll call in HR. Sam moonlights for the HR department, so don't expect to get off easy if that happens. Anyway, you'd likely be separated onto different teams in that case, but neither of you would be forced to leave the company." She shrugs. "Can't say it's my favorite scenario, but worse things have happened."

"So you're saying I don't have to leave at all."

"That's what I'm saying. Let me just..." She gets her own tablet out and flicks her fingers a bunch of times. Natasha's superpower -- well, one of her superpowers -- is using her fancy swipey keyboard to compose emails in thirty seconds that would take Bucky half an hour to write and spell-check. He's insanely jealous. "Alright, I put your resignation from the helpmeet position through. You're officially unemployed, and you'll be employed again by the end of the day. If Tony doesn't get back to you, just give me a call and I'll harass him. He can be a little absentminded." 

"Natasha, I... Thank you." He gets up and hugs her.

"Alright, alright." She's trying to sound stoic, but her smile shines through her voice as she pats him awkwardly on the back. "Enough sappy stuff, okay? You're on vacation now, so go home and give Steve the ride of his life, if you know what I'm saying."

Bucky lets out a short bark of laughter, even though Natasha has made her face all stony again like she likes to. "Bye, Nat. See you later."

"See ya, Barnes."

* * *

That night, Bucky slips his arms around Steve while he's working at his desk, grinning like a fool. "I have something to show you."

Steve closes his laptop and turns around. "Yeah?"

Bucky places his tablet in Steve's lap.

" 'Congratulations, James Buchanan Barnes. SHIELD is pleased to offer you a job as a strategic consultant working under...' Bucky! You're gonna be on my team!"

Bucky just grins and nods. Steve leaps up and hugs him, pressing a comically loud kiss to his cheek and following it with several more. "I'm so happy for you!"

"I was wondering if maybe I could keep living here," he blurts out. "I know we just agreed to be boyfriends like two weeks ago, but I really like living here and it's worked out well for both of us I think and --"

"Of course. Of course you can. Please stay."

Bucky's grin gets wider. He had forgotten how it could ache to smile.


	22. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS DONE!!! I'm so nervous to have it completely finished and out of my hands :O Thank you so much to everyone who has commented or kudo-d this work. I seriously couldn't have done it without you. I've read every single comment, many of them multiple times, and they gave me the energy not only to complete this but also to get through the end of undergrad! You are amazing and I am humbled by your support!

A few weeks later, Bucky and Steve sit diagonally across from each other, huddled around a glowing hologram of the blueprint of a city block with Natasha, Tony, and Fury. The blueprint represents a Hydra facility uncovered in Hungary, through Erdei's intelligence. They are to figure out the best tactics for the SHIELD team that will be raiding it within the month. Bucky is angling to be part of the team, and Steve says he has a pretty good shot.

"...and if we send a smaller team, say two or three operatives, through the side entrance concurrently," Steve is saying, dragging colored symbols around the map, "then they can take out the control room while the chaos in the main lobby has pulled their defenses away."

"What do you think so far, Bucky?" Natasha asks. Bucky still forgets he's allowed to speak up sometimes; Sam and Natasha have both agreed to prompt him to say what's on his mind occasionally. He's Steve's equal now and is expected to make his thoughts known whenever he might have valuable input, not just when someone asks him. 

"Mm..." He drags one of the red sniper nests to an adjacent building. "The building you had this one on doesn't have any HVAC systems on the roof for cover. No matter where you place them, they'll have to choose between full visibility over the edge of the roof and being hidden from this guard tower," he points out. "This building has this little smokestack, which is enough cover for one or two operatives if you send the sniper with a spotter. The angle from this building is better, too, given the prevailing winds in this part of the city. And now this operative can cover this one,  _ and _ this one." He draws the angle from the sniper he has just replaced to two other snipers in nearby nests.

"Fantastic, Buck," Steve murmurs, glancing up at him from across the table with a smile.

Tony points out, "If we send the main team up this alley instead of this one, then the snipers will have an angle on  _ both _ teams for almost their entire approach." He sits back, folding his arms. "The setup can't get much better than that, if you ask me."

"Looks good to me," Fury says. "I'm about ready to sign off on this one. Let's go through the gameplan one more time."

They run through the positioning and movements of all three teams. There are a few dicey moments, but considering the tight, civilian-packed city environment and the high amount of projectile weapons suspected to be stored in the base, the strategy seems fairly airtight.

"I'll run it by JARVIS and see if he has any suggestions," Tony says, folding the building up with one hand and placing it back into the computer screen as a flat animation. "Nice work tonight, team. What am I paying you these days? Should be higher. JARVIS, give 'em all a bonus. Meeting adjourned." Steve surreptitiously rolls his eyes at Bucky. Tony is already paying them exorbitantly for their work, and they're not exactly hurting for money. Steve funnels most of their surplus into various charities, but as much as he tells Tony the two of them don't need anything more, Tony still uses money to show his affection for their team. Bucky thinks there are worse things.

The two of them make their way towards the door. Steve and Bucky are the last ones out, letting Fury go in front of them, and as Bucky steps in front of Steve, Steve lightly places his hand on Bucky's lower back. A simple gesture of support, thanks for a job well done. Bucky looks back. On Steve's face is a sappy expression of what Bucky can only call love. A flood of warmth drenches him. This moment is perfect. There is nothing he wants to change. He loves Steve, he loves his team, and he loves himself.

It's a simple thing, but under Hydra's direction, Bucky was constantly furious with anyone and everyone around him, including himself. Hydra set unachievable standards for him, and he was constantly failing.  _ You should have been sitting up straighter. _ Or,  _ A machine wouldn't have fallen for that old trick. _ Even in his constant state of cryofreeze-induced confusion and listlessness -- the state he used to mistake for calm -- he still felt anger, sadness, depression, hopelessness, dozens of emotions. He lied to himself that he felt nothing, but in fact he was constantly overwhelmed by anxiety so intense he dissociated to deal with it. Hydra labeled all of these things failures, too. 

The truth is, Bucky was never Hydra's perfect weapon, as much as he had wanted to be. He was a terrible simulacrum of a machine, contorted into such psychologically stressful positions that he was constantly an inch away from breaking entirely. He was so tormented that he could literally only function when Hydra erased his mind once a week. 

And he had been so furious that he couldn't successfully be a machine that he never considered dropping the act and being  _ human _ .

Now, Bucky thinks, he's figured it out. He's found a way he can live, actually live, not just struggle through his days. A way of life that fulfills him, that fills him with joy.

In that moment of contentment, Bucky realizes he wants to stay with Steve for the rest of his life.

And so he does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to chat or know more about me, my Tumblr is singular-they! It's kind of a hot mess. I am sorry.
> 
> Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this. I am so indebted to you guys.


End file.
